I Came Fully Awake

I awake and wonder where I am and how I have come to be in this place. You are here and your presence fills my being, I am once more alive and young, full of energy and longing … for you.

Even though you are here, your life is full to the top with troubles, things unattended that have now caught up with you and you’ve no where to run. There is a girl you are involved with on some level, yet that relationship is unclear. Are you pursuing her for love or to be attached to someone? Why can’t that someone be me? I am here now, long gone from your presence but you have never been far from my thoughts and never out of my heart.

I hurry to improve my appearance, which I have neglected for so long, not caring enough to bother with hair styles and clothes that flatter. I put on make-up and a light scent of perfume, hoping the years have not taken so heavy a toll that you see only an old woman. You seem younger now than before and so does this woman. But that can’t be.

The years, time spent apart, have simply accentuated the difference in our ages but I am, once again acutely aware of it. You seem glad enough to see me and spend time telling me a little of where you have been but you seem to be looking over my shoulder, constantly keeping an eye out for her or for the troubles that are chasing you.

A man enters the scene and brings news of these troubles and it is I who stand to face him and try to untangle the tale he tells of messes made and left for others to clean, debts owed, goodbyes not said. After speaking with him for some time, I believe we have a plan to get everything straight and your past settled but just as we are about to present this to you, he brings up even more, a virtual mountain of debt, loss caused by you, pain you inflicted, people you deserted and I am saddened so deeply to learn of the path you have taken but even more, that you have run and hidden and still seek to, rather than stand and try to make each thing right as it came along. Now it seems there is no end to the destruction you have caused. You’ve been like a tornado ripping and tearing your way through people’s lives and hearts, shredding everything in your path.

The destruction is such that I can see no way it can be made right and I begin to understand why you run. This woman is planning a move to another state and you are planning to follow her. For a moment I formulate in my mind how I can follow you and live close by, so that I can at least be near you and have whatever contact I can. But I am so tired and can not seem to keep up. I see your preparations to leave and call out to you but you barely notice as your focus is on fleeing, on following her. My eyelids are so heavy, my limbs have no strength to come after you and I fall into a deep slumber where you are just a dream, a memory from the past that came to visit ever so briefly and then were once again gone, and I wonder in my sleeping if I will dream of you still.