Let me be. Let me detach and drift downstream, away from the dry patch of earth… all those ants. Ants will be ants will be ants, but I don’t need them here. Wait, this is the waking moment, and you were… yes, last night, the dueling dreams falling into ____ and then tumbling into that old, familiar madness.
The agreement realized and ratified, with clear reason and finely crafted self-deception. Then, the fire.
Remember sitting at the camp gathering and you turned and saw the kiss and it wasn’t so much the kiss as it was the way she let her head fall against his chest. A tender pause, and they were drawing the hallelujah and you were left to choke as the air rushed from your lungs.
Then, the pained and wicked negotiation. No, you became the wretched negotiator and she saw it. You were no longer the thrilling bird on bough. She sat above you, remember? And she looked down, trying to hide the condolence in her eyes, and shed for you a few cells of kindness as her whole and blossoming being was moving away.
(Just survive this moment, she thought, and then she can go… go, go where he would be waiting in the fun, fun, fun.)
All of this, in the wake of the recollection of what you used to feel in those carefree hallucinations. The reminder of your penchant for poison flowers, like some hapless weirdo dreamt up in Ludwidge Dawson’s opium tea. Those dreams need no contrast or depth of field. The composition is merely colored sensations, a true melange, set to the temperature of a shallow exhale.
Maybe you really did disappear into a smudge of color. The both of you, there in the shadows at the foot of the Pethényi lépcső. The work of pre-war stonemasons left to age and settle into a dark array of perilous footing. The steps slumped and sagging, worn to a sheen by a century’s parade of shuffling feet.
“Here, take my arm,” the gesture said but no words were spoken. And the street lamps were all unlit. Down, down, down the perilous descent… but so safe somehow.
The tea! Yes, Ludwidge’s tea was settling in, taking hold from the first sip.
Do you remember? Can you call it that? A memory? Or was it only a dream? All of the edicts and maxims and parable punchlines lie on the floor with yesterday’s socks. The wisdom of your peers and forerunners carried off like cigarette ash and there’s nothing tragic here. You are both the lens and the microslide, and the medium pressed between the glass is also you.
Can you recall the way that later on you sensed her on your skin? You turned in the still air of the entryway and it was like a curtain of lilacs dropped behind you and you turned again, but just as swiftly as this sensation arrived, it evaporated.
Oh, how the mind and our sensory nerves play such tricks. All in the service of survival. Ha! There is mischief here and mystery, too.
Was it all just the tea? Was it all just fun and games and agony?
Time will tell. For now, just call them dreams. Move on with your day. These are private matters. No one on the outside need know a thing.
