The Awakening

The Awakening Silence—nothing, blackness then suddenly there is a rush of a shrill sound that invades my dreamscape. It fills my ears and stirs the snowy maelstroms that, for many months now, has been a flurry in my head and other times numbing silence. Chaotic at first, frightening and then I hear it— Is that music? No, it isn’t music that I hear, not exactly. It’s the sound of cicadas driven by the scrolls of an ancient script, and tree frogs that are lost in the throes of the same ancient code as the cicadas. The meandering creek is gurgling over rounded stones of quarries past on its way home and then I feel it— Verdant fields stretch far and wide though I can’t see them I feel them looming in the moonless night; I feel the dewy cold grass under foot. At times solid yet cold and slick, my foot is met with a stone. Upon my calves, soft, wet kisses from folded blossoms sway and lick. I feel the crisp change of season cool upon my moist skin and as it creeps under my garment then I smell it— My nose is suddenly aware and piqued with utter pleasure of the redolence of wet meadow grass, eucalyptus, star of jasmine and lavender wafting ever so gently on the nocturnal currents languidly drifting by me with nary a care and then I taste it— Bitter, like bile, rises in my consciousness like a harbinger that appears out of the shadows bearing a reality and truth of which my heart and soul can’t bear the weight of; it all comes flooding back; why I’m here all alone, why there are cold slabs of marble stones in this meadow, the longing, the crushed dreams, the utter anguish of missing you and then I see it— As the sun begins to rise over the predawn horizon, elongated shadows of a lifeless tree ruggedly haunting and beautiful standing lifeless, an old sacred marble mausoleum abandoned looms in the distance and there at my feet I find your name etched on stone where you lie beneath the sod, sleeping and I find me, sleepwalking. I’m fully awake now and I’m beginning to live again.