Desert to Dreams

Morning and far from home. In a house, but not a home and, yet, the furniture asked me to stay. The warm smells from the kitchen say "eat" and be full.

But then, there are these feet and what are they if not takers of me? What do they do when they do not move? Massage them, sure, OK, in fact, yes, please do. Wrap them in hot towels and rub them with lavender oil. Sometimes my toe nails are orange. Sometimes they are too long. But not my legs, not so much. I've always been small.

Learned to eat vegetables and fruit too late. Is that why I am only 5'3. At the DMV, the clerk asked if all my physical traits are the same. I didn't want him to know that, yes, since I was 16 I have maybe gained weight and when I wear green my eyes are the same color. On paper they are brown. On paper they are wider. When I have to think, they get big.

If I'm not home and I'm not in the house that isn't my home, I am away. On vacation to the desert or other summer flings. I will try the food of the town and think it's the best. I will look at every stranger and feel comforted by their strangeness. In their face, I feel familiar. As for the tourists, I am one of them until I stay longer than 10 days. As of yet, I am still one of them. Pointing, making flashes, watching the people who live here. I am validated by their otherness. Oh, this town.

I am full before the harvest, like a seed pod waiting to empty. My earth will be nourished by my memory of trips before this one and the next. My home no longer the earth because it is another planet. It can't be reached on foot and our atmosphere is pure. As for now, there is no way to come or go. Somehow I came from there, but I don't know how.

There is proof I had a home, there is evidence of bringing up, there are clues that point to my childhood. Most of these things are locked away in safety, around the corner from the street I grew up on. No one has the key. Other things, other proofs, I wear on me. I show the outside world that some objects have meaning. They are from the past so, don't worry, I'm not materialistic.

And I drink loads and loads of tea.

I look through other people's windows and can't see a thing. I think I make out a scene: a mother, a father, there are children and, of course, they are small. It might be dinner because everything is candlelit. It's a different era, without electricity. Their shades are drawn so the house might be empty and this is all in my mind. The house has been passed down for generations.

This is the wallpaper painted on the child's wall. Like a rotating light, the horses gallop until the child falls asleep. The horses gallop in slow motion. In real life, these processions of horses really exist. They go back to the stable at night, but I am asleep by then. I am still dreaming they are free.

This is the dream I wear on my face when I wake up late at night. It was a nightmare, but it looked nothing like a horse of night. I camped alone in the woods for the first time and, like I guessed, I felt threatened by a something. Or someone threatening but really a movie memory. I saw too many movies, watched too many shows.

 

Inside this house, I saw nothing real and became imaginative. The landscape outside was a playground of sorts. I planted nothing, but softened the dirt anyway. I pretended to nourish the roots, watering them. I believed I made them grow from nothing. I watched them become this landscape, believing it was me.