Have you ever had a dream that clung to you the next morning, following you through the day like smoke in your hair—the odor of nothing suffusing your thoughts?

I am heavy today with the weight of my dreams.

Senseless fragments, full of meaning come knocking at the edges of my consciousness. The sudden pressure on my mind winds me—leaves me breathless.

I feel trapped in in-betweens.

One foot in the present, the other tethered to the imprecise mists of dreaming. One ear absorbs the wind, the birds and the lapping of the waves on the shore, but the other—hangs poised in suspense, listening for the next knock and an answer.

My body feels slow, groggy, as though not fully awake. My eyes hesitate between looking forward and peering back through the obscure filaments of half-remembered stories.

This is the heaviness of dreams.

A tortuous suspension between forgetting and recollection. A milky swirl of indecipherable insight carried in an iron cauldron by fragile hands. A deep yearning to grasp at the tickling fingers of the subconscious world.

The air is thick with whispers and sticky with questions.

I swim through it, eyes open and searching for a dart or a glimmer of truth. Snippets of dreams alight on my shoulder, only to twist out of reach after murmuring half a secret, taunting, hovering, then flitting away.

Tomorrow, I know I will wake refreshed and unburdened. But today—today is heavy with the shadows of dreams. I walk and write around their edges, never quite arriving at the center of things.

 

Relephant Read:

The One Trick Every Lucid Dreamer Should Know.

Author: Toby Israel

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: Wikipedia Commons