_{Source:  ece.cmu.edu}

I’m in my sunroom at the computer when Rebecca approaches me.  She is straight out of her morning shower and her long dark hair runs slick over her shoulders.  The white cotton terrycloth towel barely covers her long, lean, figure.  I ask,

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“I could murder a cup of coffee,” she says.  She follows me into the kitchen as I measure the coffee and pour the water into the machine.

“I had this dream,” she says, leaning now in my kitchen doorway, still wrapped in her towel.  “Have you ever had one of those dreams where you wake up crying?  You wake up with tears running down your face?”

I look into her eyes, which are dark, and liquid, and filled with hope and something I can’t define.  I am honest.

“No.  But I’ve woken up screaming.”

“Yes, but this is different.  I wish I could remember the dream.”

I hand Rebecca her coffee, ‘just black, no cream or sugar, nothing fancy,’ the way she ordered it in the restaurant the night before.  We had shared a marvelous meal of homemade charcuterie, heirloom tomatoes, freshly roasted pork, and a crisp Pino Gris.  Rebecca had done her best to flirt with our server, who wasn’t game for the game, which amused us both.  Over the meal we shared common joys and private sorrows.  I felt as if we had opened a window into our hearts.

I remember Rebecca now, in the candlelight, her face a shifting pattern of wonder, fear, delight, and sadness.  I remember the stories we shared while the voices of others in the restaurant created an invisible pocket of privacy.  I imagine her waking that morning, tears streaming down her face, and me in my bedroom, not knowing.  I imagine her waking this way in her home halfway across the world, and me in my room waking the same day with my scream.  I think of people all over the world, and wonder how many of us wake with tears or a scream.  We don’t know about one another at all—we’re a fraction of five billion and we can’t even imagine the happenings that trouble our collective dreams.

We are sleeping, we are waking.  We are crying, we are screaming.  We are having expensive meals in chic restaurants with dear friends.  We are sharing coffee while wrapped in terrycloth.  We are asking questions and trying to connect.  We are hiding from ourselves and others. We are lounging in the sun and watching the clouds.  We are riding in convertibles at night through industrial wastelands. We are distracting ourselves with things and scheduling ourselves to oblivian.  We are holding one another close.  We are fighting for separation.

I wish I could remember the dream.

 words copyright voicegal 2011