poetry
Before Mae
I like to think we name things after what we want to hold on to.
I don’t know where my middle name came from. Only that
it rhymes with my sister’s and comes at the end of spring.
Mae, like the month but with an “E,” I say if people ask;
which isn’t often. A middle name is optional.
A secret that doesn’t need help being kept.
My sister’s hand held mine as I took my first step
and I’m thinking of what else is held
Still; breath; tongues;
how many meanings live in the same sound;
or the absence of it.
It’s almost May.
or the absence of it.
how many meanings live in the same sound
Still; breath; tongues;
and I’m thinking of what else is held:
My sister’s hand held mine as I took my first step
A secret that doesn’t need help being kept.
which isn’t often. A middle name is optional.
Mae, like the month but with an “E,” I say if people ask;
it rhymes with my sister’s and comes at the end of spring.
I don’t know where my middle name came from. Only that
I like to think we name things after what we want to hold on to.
~
Sleepless Dreams
I like it when people tell me what I say in my sleep. It’s something I’d forgotten I do, now having the luxury of my own room and no one to remind me of when it happens. Living in a dorm the first year of college, my bunkmate, Lola, whom I had just met, would write down snippets of my invisible conversations and read them back to me in the morning. Phrases like: “everything feels green,” said with a sigh before turning over to place my opposite cheek on the pillow. Other nights I’d giggle excitedly: “hahahahaha oh yeah. Yessss! Oh it’s party time!”
Like the context surrounding my words, I’d forgotten this tradition, until Lola and I shared a room again over spring break and she told me I didn’t talk in my sleep anymore.
“You don’t talk in your sleep anymore.” she said matter of factly. I missed this part of our relationship. I liked how people around me knew things about me that I myself could no longer recall -- like a parent who shares memories of their child that are only known through photographs. Like dreams, the memory of the moment comes alive in and between bodies, taking on new shapes and sounds each time it’s brought into a new space.
You know how dreams that felt good can be labelled as bad in retrospect, because you’ve fallen in love with someone who doesn’t exist in waking life, or who does but not in the same way, or in a way that you can’t have? Time and space turn good into bad; combine love and grief. I think this must have been what I was referring to in a facebook post I made “seven years ago today” that popped up on my newsfeed, which read “I hate good dreams.”
I’m thinking of this because I'm part of an online group of anonymous dream enthusiasts. On the forum someone asked, “Do you ever get attached to a dream person? (a person who isn't real and only exists within that dream). Cause same :( Been having those types of dreams with little to no plot where I just talk to someone and then I wake up and feel bad ever since I was young and even now it makes me sad.” Someone comments: “Yeah I sometimes do. Its weird, they don’t exist, but I kinda experienced them non the less. I once dreamt of a girl, we were really close in the dream, best of friends. She got cancer, and I sometimes still think of her. I know she is not real, but then again, I hope she is doing well.. its weird.” And I think there is something precious about hoping that someone is doing well in the same sentence that you acknowledge they don’t exist.
It implies a universe beyond belief, that doesn’t require belief to come into being. A place birthed of contradiction where the rules of noncontradiction need not apply. These relationships, like those that occur when sharing a bunk bed, or in an anonymous online forum, involve another way of being in and with time-- that’s less timeless and more timefull -- where established intimacy need not a reason or known history in order to exist. It reminds me of a dream I had, of a woman who didn’t speak
But listened for a certain sound, and would sit
by anyone who made it. I don’t remember her face.
Only that she didn’t sleep, just waited in the chair
beside me, with her hands folded neatly in her lap.