A Dream

I had a dream last night that we climbed through a cityscape. We climbed shelves of ramshackle buildings, scattered and rotting in the highest regions of a metropolis, up into cold heights of poverty and loneliness. These splintering, tottering, hollow shacks were sun stained and worn by the wind. We ran through their endless open doorways and windows emptied of glass, finding nothing but browned rags, dried and clumped in corners, and shards of bleached wood, peeled away from the structure walls and lying in piles on the dirty, dry floors.

At first, when I saw it coming on the horizon, I thought it was a vivid night, one of those nights where you can see forever - Mars and shooting stars and ridiculously glowing constellations. Then I saw a brilliant burning comet spraying a pyramid path into the sky, so bright I thought to put it in my palm, and I realized that we looked upon the end - the midnight movement of death.

The end of the world came, a firestorm roaring across the earth, a horizon of black clouds billowing into the heavens, scratched with cracks of lightening shooting in all directions, and glowing in its belly was the rolling sun, brought down from the sky and sent burning unto us, embracing everything…

…and we huddled round each other, you two and some woman I can’t remember.

We hugged each other closely, and just as I told you, “I love you,” the blackness swallowed us and you were gone.

What replaced you was the total silence of a cradling void.
I was frozen in the fetal position and could not move.
I acknowledged the nothingness with my aloneness.
Dead is immovable darkness and heavy breathing.
That is all.

Entirely awake, lying in the cool sheets of my bed, it was some time before I accepted that I could move.

When I was finally able to open my eyes, I thought I’d learned something…