Found & Lost

I yanked it from the dream like a stubborn weed and emerged to morning half-sleep in triumph–25, 36, 47. As I rolled around and came to myself, I fought to remember, to take the code with me into the day. It was vital, somehow.

For me it isn’t the comeuppance of final exams after no study, or of finding myself naked in front of a packed assembly. My sweated dreams find me standing at a bank of tall, grey lockers in a high school hallway impossibly long. With my books trapped inside and class looming, I stand spinning the dial right left right to no effect. I have no destination, but a deadline looms. No bell rings, I know I am late. No-one surrounds me. I find an office and see only faceless bureaucrats behind walls of glass, and blank, yawning monitors on desks, most of whose chairs are empty.

But then, in a dream colored by the drugs that now only half work for the pain, my locker opens, finally. It’s easy–25, 36, 47–right left right, open it swings. A breakthrough. In my twilight state, I exult. Alone still, I crouched at the open door. Left-behind things litter the locker’s floor, chaotic, anonymous–featureless texts, sneakers too small, mismatched socks. I didn’t know what to touch, what to take.

I yanked from a dream that which blocked me to find myself no further along, faced with a collection of blurry useless objects. As I opened my eyes and considered it, the triumph evaporated. I take what remains of the good found feeling and cherish it, small in my belly. Life presents few such moments lately.

Positive is hard work, now. I search to find meaning in the numbers, in the rubble revealed. All I see in them, or in these words I’m reading, is myself alone in a long winding/windy hall, between other places that I could be, should be. The more it seems apt, the more I must stretch and groan to make it so, to make it go away. I wasn’t sure I’d end up here when this started.

I found no schedule, no place, in the chaos. Somewhere a bell rings.