Au Memoire

My heart is a mess. I am afraid. Terrified. And there is absolutely no reason for me to be. I remember things. Things that never happened. Things that might sometime later. If it has ever been or ever will be possible, I remember it. Why? I know things now that most people could never know. Good thing, too. Look what they have done to me. And who would have thought that, all along, everything I can remember is everything that ever will be?

I understand words I have never learned. I relive things I should be living for the first time. I recognize people I have never met before, and I know their names. And there is an overtly restless feeling inside me telling me that I do not belong here. This is not me. It is not who I am, or maybe it is that it is not who I am supposed to be. How do I know the things that I know?

And then there is her. When I am with her, I know that wherever I am does not matter. Whatever I am doing becomes abstract and arbitrary. I belong with her. In a place where things do not happen. Where I do not have to remember everything and more. Where I do not have to be without her. I love her more than I am capable of saying, and I feel that this love has been with me for longer than I can even remember. Days without her are disturbing. They are full of memories.

Nights are worse. I do not know what made the memories start again. Probably it was that place, but I cannot say for certain. They are more vivid now, and my old dreams are back. As I lie in bed each night, I know what is about to come. My mind weighs itself to sleep with thoughts of things that will not happen in this world (and a few that will) until I am touched by sleep. It is not the dreamless sleep that has blessed me for so many years. Things happen in my dreams. Dreadful things. Things that do not belong in the mind of any living person.

I do not know what I am supposed to do. I do not know how I am supposed to do it. I do not even know what I am supposed to know. Something will happen soon. Something that the world will not be ready for. And I will be watching in a distant place, not at all safe from the agony. Wake me, please, only when she arrives.

1/5/06