This dream started off strange.
I was driving my car on a highway, peeling fast and hard down a straightaway with reckless abandon and a handle of vodka in the floorboard of my car. There was a split second when the vibe changed, where the enrgy twisted into something else. I approached some sort of toll booth that required me to get out of my car. I exited, and heard two people say something about the carelessness and recklessness of drivers.
I turned around to look where they were looking, back to where I had previously stashed some belongings in a friend’s cabinet. Books mostly, and maybe an old shirt. One book had a guerilla soldier figure on the ront and another was about alcoholism..
A crowd began to gather around a man, now lying on the dark asphalt next to his motorcycle.
“I didn’t hit him. I didn’t hit him,” I kept telling myself.
I don’t think I did, but rather the speed at which I passed him made him lose control of their motorcycle.
Excuses, was the resounding echo around the dream.
“No guns, guards!” a man at the toll shouted.
I had one concealed under my shirt, so I got back in my car to leave it in in my friend’s cabinet with the rest of my things. When I returned, I disarmed and placed my pistol beneath a book and used the old book to conceal the other book about alcoholism more than I did the gun.
“You hit him,” my friend said to me, quietly, and I softly proclaimed that I didn’t. Truthfully, I know that I didn’t. I felt no impact. I passed him too close and too fast. The paramedic seemed to validate this as he prepared the poor guy for transport, left side all scraped off, his clothes torn through where the aspshalt chewed him up.
I felt glad at the truth, but my friend’s demeanor wouldn’t let me be assuaged, and I’ll always love him for that, in dream and out. He let me know without a doubt that I can do so much better, but without that same doubt, he let me know that I needed to change. And this was the largest truth.
The dream changed, and there you were, like I reembered you last: long hair, crop top, your body strong, beautiful, and full of youth. Alive. Guitars were out, and I know we were swapping songs like we used to. (I think I had made it past the toll, where we were now. I needed to lay my arms down.)
“Where did you find the lyrics for Mannequins?”
I wanted to cover it. Play the song to you, like you, for you.
You told me they had a website with the lyrics since they weren’t on Bandcamp. We looked, but found nothing.
“I have their book,” I tell you and then go to pull it from the shelf.
We’re at my parent’s house, in the middle room. I don’t know if we had been travelling together again or if you had come to visit me.
I opened the book, more like a scrapbook than anything and turned to the pages where all the album covers were pasted. They could be folded out and opened like a pop-up book, and inside the lyrics were pasted. I deconstructed the one for A Dying Planet. Some were torn out, Mannequins included. You told me you would write them down for me, and I loved you for that.
I went to the shelf, placed the book atop it, and paused. I turned to you.
“I want to tell you something.”
I don’t know why I was at a loss for words. I knew what I wanted to say even though I just stared at you. Looked at you. You looked at me, shit eating quirk of a grin like, really? You knew what I wanted to say too.
“Shut up, and give me a second.”
And you laughed at me. That large, full laugh that I love. Genuine. Honest. I laughed too, and embraced the hell out of you. Your strong arms and hands that made music came up and compelted the circuit.
“Even though I haven’t seen you in years, I want you to know that I want you here. You deserve to be here.”
We look at each other, and it’s almost like we’re on the cusp of the 2020s again. You laugh and say ‘why do I feel more depressed when I’m with you?’ It’s funny. I get it. It’s both a slight and a compliment. You say ‘I could never write songs like you. They’re so derisive.’ As if you aren’t the pot calling the kettle black. But it’s funny, and it’s true.
And as it always is, it was just so easy to fall into physical intimacy with you. I loved you more than I could ever say to myself or you. I don’t think we ever had the right words for each other, but there was an understanding.
“Don’t forget about my parents.” And you look back at the wide open door in a panic. I bring your face back to me and kiss you. I don’t thing they’re home anyway.
These dreams always come in threes, but I’ve only had the pattern of one set to go off of. They come past, present, and future. And them, I fear I’ll be forced to let them go.