“And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.”

In the absence of sleep my dreams fled. There was no more past or future- just the now. The magical realism that had saturated my days was lost.

I have recently returned to sleeping.  And like the consuming sinkholes I now dream of -- my dreams pull me back into unknown times and cause witness to previously unimagined forms of omission. 

These are not the nights of golden slumbers.

Some mornings, I awake to effervescent sunlight dappling my duvet and I time travel. I feel your warm breath on the back of my neck and tucked inside the protective spoon of our love, I have an overwhelming sense of hope.

Then I realize this is the residue of a dream and that you are, actually, lost to fates unknown.

I dream of careening cars that move backwards through time and space and I frantically try to avoid hitting obstacles or harming people as I glance in the rearview mirror.  In those dreams I cannot turn to look back, but must face forward capturing only stolen glimpses of what is next.

I dream of forgetting that I am in therapy and arriving to a first appointment with a psychologist to find my most hidden secrets written in sharpie markers on the consultation room walls.

I dream of lyrical motorcycle rides. Rides on beautiful bikes that metamorphose into steampunk dragons that lunge at cars and men in suits, as I try to steer a safe course and do no harm.

And then I dream of sinkholes; of pedestrian moments turned into abject terror, as normalcy is swallowed without warning into nothingness.

Those are the most terrifying- a silent and sudden loss of the known. From normal to not.  And unless you knew what preceded the peaceful tableau before you- you might never realize what had been lost.