Taking on Water . . .

Dreams of the last nights are riddles, puzzles, mirrors, windows; if I can just decipher the code.

Four nights ago, on a windy dark road through a thick forest, no moonlight, I am driving. There is a female in the passenger seat; maybe Sara, Wendy, Susan - I don't know the woman, but I know she trusts me and she is counting on me for something. I am driving. But I am blind. I say, "I can't see yet."
"But you're eyes are open." She raises her hand to the wheel.
"Yes, but I can't see yet. I have a condition."
"A condition?" I can see her panic like a funnel cloud in the distance racing closer.
"It's okay really. I'm highly intuitive."
"What kind of condition?" she says and her voice is pitching higher than the strings.
"Delayed rotation."
"Can you see yet? Can you see the road?"
"No." I begin to doubt myself. My teeth clench and my shoulders turtle up. "But I'm on it." I swallow. "Right?"
"What is delayed rotation?"
"I open my eyes but my eyeballs are turned inward because it is my nature. Mine have become delayed. They take longer to turn out again."
"Do you know where you're going?"
Then I wake up. I open my eyes, grateful for the dark room but the grays of definition. How much do I need to see to know where I am? I walked through much of my childhood without the lights on and I'm thriving. I can walk in the dark. I can trust my feet.
Right?

Dream two:
Last night, sidewalks, trees, dark misty night, some chemical smell as if a refinery is not far, The air is dense. My thighs are loaded with lead; I'm no larger; but I cannot move. I need a machete to move through this thickness. My back bends and there is no relief and no end to the road, rolling out like a ribbon of gray taffy. There is no stopping, no resting place. There is only the hot tar road beneath the thin souled shoes and this weight. Is this how we move in the world? Is this where I have to be now. It is as if I am swimming toward a shore that recedes with every stroke. And I am not in a place that permits floating. So there is only moving, stroking, swimming.
I wake exhausted, beaten. There it is then; the thing that doesn't happen to Mary. I feel beaten. I know I am not - but right here, this night, this moment, the vessel is swamped and taking on water.