Dreams (flash fiction?)

Hello Dear Ones. Life got away from me last week, and of course came crashing back again, as life does. I spent the last half of the week escaping floor refinishing fumes in my apartment, trying to live from a hotel. In the shuffle, I missed sending this out last Friday. And I have the opportunity to give myself grace as I try to get back into my writing routine. This writing is a draft, this life is a draft — to be lovingly accepted and nudged into a better, more lovely form.

Such dreams did come — to the point that I don't remember the details, I only remember the feeling of the dreams — mixed as they are with the writing of Ruth Rendell and the true crime podcast and my own growing hope and joy. So, there are heads in buckets, but they are singing. There is someone creeping in the shadows, singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Somewhere in the dream is a disembodied hand holding a knife and a mango flies toward it, Fruit Ninja style, and ends up sliced into beautifully uniform cubes, presented in a bowl, translucent white chased with some kind of blue pattern.

I wake up smiling. I wake up covered in sweat. It’s not the images, I tell myself, it’s the hot flashes. Or maybe the hot flashes make the images. I have no idea. I’m just glad that the long, endless blank that used to be my experience of sleep has become filled with sounds and images. I need them to survive.