I startle awake from a loud crack in the center of my head. I have again forgotten that I am trying to break out of an ancient tomb. Even though I remember again, that there is nothing more important, I also want to just turn over and try to find a slightly more comfortable spot - embedded as I am - in this bruising cold stone. I'm literally buried in rock, choking on the dust of the dead, but I'm so very tired, as I am daily engaged in digging or re-stacking the rock walls and so I keep on dreaming lets pretend this isn't happening. There are a million versions of this dream. One of them just popped (its what startled me) and it turns out it wasn't a sparkly balloon after all - just another rock loosened from the dream wall. I notice I have a fresh welt. Oh I think. This is just the way it is. But then I remember sometimes there is a bird that I hear, even through all the gravity and clay. You are in a tomb! Its little churring says. You aren’t actually made of rock! You have to try to get out! My life seems to have been a long process of constant dying by getting dream - stoned.
Since I’m very lonely, I have tried to make friends with the rocks, but they are obtuse, and hard to get to know. The hardness reminds me of my prison and so I dream they are balloons, eggs, snow globes, seeds, windows, bubbles, raindrops. But that doesn’t stop their actual sharp edges or their calcifying ways. No matter what, they press especially severely to make a grave of my heart, and I know this is what is happening, but it is dark, cold, and I have gotten used to it. Even my tears are crystalized. As you can imagine, it hurts to cry – like rubbing sunscreen in your eyes.
I wish I could die for good, I think. You may have heard that hearing is the last sense to depart and there is a rustling and sweeping and the bird song that I sometimes hear churr churring is elliptical and urgent. The others have gotten out! It says. Being alone for so long, I deeply long for the others, even though I fear they may be rocks and stones as well. The bird is saying it’s not like that. The bird’s bright wings flash into my mind –into the center of my head, and also, into the welt right under my ribs. Somehow, I remember that this feeling is not like the dreams of disguised stones – its real – and I start to remember I am real too. Keep trying! I hear. We love you!
I don’t know how to try. Digging, stacking, and dreaming have never worked, so I stay close to the feather feeling – with the hollowing sense that lets it fly. It is an effervescence that is like the deepest, safest kind of breathing you can imagine. Its not a window, mirror or balloon, because it is a happening right inside the rocks, the stone, the rind of my own flesh.
I’m breathing inside the feather’s quill. Time, rocks and even my body dissolve into soft sand slipping through the long neck of its own glass. I begin to see the bird I have only ever heard. Then I see the others! But the way it is now, they are not others at all.
When did I forget this?
When I was trapped, when I was stuck, when I was raped, beaten, slaughtered, left for dead, ignored, stoned. When I beat against the rock wall, when I was sure I was ugly and forgotten – these things made me misunderstand the bird’s churring. I dreamed of escape and so it was translated: Get out! But just like there are no others, there is also no outside. I don’t blame you for being confused, but
I thought I would tell you this story anyway.
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