2023-05-14: dreams (quarter century)
two nights ago, awful sleep. my younger dog barking just after 4. very unusual for him. someone arriving or leaving next door? i let him out to pee. after: he wouldn't go back down to sleep. kept barking. clearly unsettled. i decided to sleep on the couch with the dogs. brought a pillow down. one dog curled up behind my legs, and one beside me.
this worked, but my sleep was wrecked. last night i had supper with friends, and then an extremely vivid dream: i'm back on my childhood street. i see a woman my brain tells me is someone from my past, the one i fell for impossibly hard, the one i could never arrange plans with when i was a student and had no money, the one who left for ireland twenty years ago.
we hug. we laugh. "it's been a quarter century!" well, close enough. almost twenty-five years since i last saw her in person, since we wandered around the city with a mutual friend, our unspoken attraction tighter than a loaded spring.
a fraction of a moment and we're in a room, sitting on a bed, an old dog sprawled out between us. "this is my dog," i say. she looks at him. "he's passed?" she asks. i nod sadly, the two of us petting my old dog that died two winters ago. i'm just happy to be there, on my old street, with my dog one more time, and with her one more time, the girl from out east, the one i still think of occasionally, the one who, if i'm being honest with myself, i'll never see again.
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