dreaming

Sometimes I wake from dreams, from nightmares where Ryan has left me for someone else, where he is indifferent to the way my heart has exploded in my chest. When I wake, the dream still lingers, and if I am lucky, he's still there, and I press myself against him, relieved at the untruth of it all. Sometimes he's already gone to work, and I am left wallowing in the dregs of that dream, regretting the visitation.

Sometimes I dream of old boyfriends. My first boyfriend, my Byronic hero, who gave me a birthday kiss on the cheek, whose Converse carried him on the dull linoleum in flight. I wake up guilty, even when it's only the still innocent glimpses we had when we were twelve. Even the phone terrified me then.

Last night I fell asleep thinking of our lost student, of the boy whose death has broken the hearts of my own kids. I thought about the act of suicide and of lost things--fatherhood, college, the unfinished woods project his classmates have taken on.

Next door, our neighbors were having a party, guests spilling onto their patio, their laughter elbowing into my somber thoughts.

Late at night, we lie awake, staring at the dim memory of the ceiling. We are within our own heads for a time.

Read: Lullaby of the Onion. Monologue for an Onion.