I keep having the strangest dreams. Last night, I was atop some overhang on the Golden Gate Bridge, my legs dangling from the cutting metal precipice. I was too scared to jump. Cars moved past without seeing me. Then some began to slow. A person with a face I have known but did not recognise walked up to me, slowly, from the road.
Alaska, she said.
I was too petrified to ask her what she meant, but she smiled and her smile was like the laugh of Medusa and it froze me and it warmed me. And others came, those she knew, a collection of them. And they took my arm, even while I leaned away, out, out, they guided me into a car.
And I was ushered calmly into a home, and I very nearly resisted and ran, a home for others who hadn't done what I hadn't done. I knew many of them, though I had never known that they were like me. Some I embraced, some I smiled with. But before I entered I looked back to those who had caught me, I looked to the first one.
I hope this won't be the last time I...
No. They give us visiting hours, she replied, telling me something I had not known until then, something warm and homely, something comforting. I think now I recognise her face.
How can it be that I am so grateful yet so empty?
No comments:
Post a Comment