Dancing in a Dream
How a song brings me to destruction.
The music begins.
Eyes flutter open. I am on the floor surrounded by notebooks spewn out at my sides. I take a moment to absorb my surroundings. I am in a daze. Heavy bright lights shining down on me. The rest is black. I sense that I have been sleeping, but only for a moment. Or maybe, this is the dream.
I lie still making these observations, but now my body has begun to move of its own accord. A hand led by a finger drawing my arm up from where it lay beside my body on the floor. Up, up, up. Extending towards the ceiling. The rest of my body follows, and I am raised upwards in a trance. Every inch of my spine obeys and I find myself on my feet.
I rotate my neck back and forth, back and forth. I stretch every limb of my body in slow arching movements. I let my head fall below my shoulders and just hang. My head limp, arms dangling from side to side.
Back up and now I move. I pick a notebook off the ground. Run my hand along the glossy cover. It guides me through space. I follow. It is an object with a mind of its own. Hung over my hand like a book with my fingers between its pages. Flap, flap, like a bird in flight.
I circle, chasing my notebook as it flies, soars through the air. I am entranced. In a sudden movement I let it fall to the ground. In another, I swoop down and pluck up another one and the dance continues.
The voices chanting, I am moving through water, awake but dreaming.
The beat picks up, like a mandolin riff and I am flying. The notebooks in my hands become dark, bad, and I am urged to grab one from the floor. To my horror and fascination, I start ripping its pages. Once I start I cannot stop. Tear, rip, shred.
And I throw the pages into the air, twirl around, and go back for more. Ripping words, destruction. Breathing raggedly as I am now in a tearing frenzy in accordance with the music. Jumping, throwing. Into the void.
It is only when the music descends that all motion comes to a halt. My breathing slows, heart still pumping fiercely. I look down at the ground, the sad remains of notebooks. Scraps of paper scattered everywhere. Words that will never make sense again. Stories, thoughts, memories: gone.
These were my memories. My secrets. My feelings. Everything about her.
Every agonizing thought that I had to jot down. Destroyed.
Gone.
Catharsis.
Now I can say what needs to be said.
The dream is broken, and here I am standing in the reality of what I have done.
And I speak.
