I walk into a house,an apartment really.My family,my sister,my brother,and Mom are there.They welcome me home,for some reason I know without a shadow of a doubt that I've been gone for awhile.
"We have to go," Mom says.
The four of us know where we're going ,to the hospital.Oddly enough,in the dream we live directly above a hospital,as in the living room could be just above a patient's room.
We walk through the smelly,disinfectant solution saturated corridors,after a few seconds we go in different directions.I pass those little curtained rooms for patients either waiting to go home or to be wheeled away on a gurney to a drab room.I'm not at ease but I'm not completely uncomfortable,I'm familiar with hospitals and sickness.
Somehow I stumble out of the network of curtains,partitions,and know-it-all machines and into the cafeteria.The windows are the size of doors,which happens to be their second if not only function,for even though the windows serve as two of the cafeteria's walls it's still stuffy and gives me the sense that tinted shades are drinking the sunlight.An artificial overcast.
I'm drawn to the glass,I swing the window/door open and step outside.The cement ground gently slopes into a ditch.A ditch like under a highway,there's water collected at the bottom.It's sunny and for some reason a sense of nostalgia or history,something like a forgotten moment of my early childhood scents the atmosphere.
A group of three or four kids chat and fool around on the slope.One in particular is the most familiar and my favorite companion.He has short,dark brown hair and reminds of my cousin.We're all caught between the elementary years and adolescence.We're safe.Time is frozen and we talk,and I remember things I didn't even know were forgotten.
"Come on,I've been looking for you,time to go."My sister holds the glass door open,summoning me to another familiar place,maybe a park,or one of the many schools I've gone to,or maybe-but unlikely another place woven from not-quite memories and not-quite familiar faces,like the ditch.Perhaps I'll be slightly uneasy,yet acquainted,like the hospital.
"Come on," she urges,thawing time into motion again.I look one last time at the boy who could be my cousin,then lift myself reluctantly from the warm,shimmering cement and shuffle to the window/door.
I wonder,Will I come back?Will I see them again?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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