Sunday, January 20, 2008

Marcie's Passions

I drifted to sleep with the sound of sparrows in the bushes outside. They lingered loudly and somehow the awkward, angry cheeps and peeps, flutters and tussling sounds outside became more distant. Sleep came again, though I had thought it would be impossible to enjoy after so many interruptions.

The soft furry feeling under my feet was wonderful and soothing. I walked down a hall full of books. Again, endless corridors of objects branched away in the distance, and I smiled at the open sky above, the birds flying by against a blue deeper than I have seen in decades.

I ran right into Marcie and held her, kissing and nuzzling her as a stream trickled from my sore, burning eyes. She kissed back furtively but soon pushed me back just a bit and took my hand.

She did not so much lead me as pull me behind her. She flew down the aisles of titles I both knew and did not, books then movies, some of which seemed to have titles written in some alien script.

I lofted like a kite behind her, just above as she ran, the books and the ground a blur, and a bright sun, embedded in the ground, loomed large before us. And then she ran inside and I fell, long and gently. She fell with me and grabbed my hands.

She pulled me into her arms and I felt her clutch me tightly, holding my head to hers, my mouth to hers, kissing mew deeply and then tucking my head in her neck as i had done to her so many times before.

I felt us land in silk and cushion and sensation that rose and fell around and on me, her hands and her body indistinguishable from the sea of soft warmth. I was drunk with lust, and we emerged in a kiss as a room slowly formed from retreating folds of red and white satin.

She laid me back and I felt warmth on my ears and cheeks as I dreamed a blush. Marcie's laugh was inaudible and deafening in me at the same time. She reached over to a nightstand and drank some water, then read a poem from Yeats.

The Sorrow of Love
by William Butler Yeats

The quarrel of the sparrow in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.
And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships,
And all the burden of her myriad years.
And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.


I touched her thigh, knowing it a ghostly one again, and I let my hand slide down her leg as she watched me, rueful smile on my face. It was the most direct correlation between the world and my dreams yet.

"It doesn't mean it's all in your mind, honey," she said. "Everything, everything is shaped and everything is flavored by what we have passion for."

I was sad, wordless as she kept speaking, but still listening. I wished more than ever that I did not know when I had dreamted but only knew the dreams themselves. This was a dream I had wanted to be more than that by being less. I wanted to not be lucid and to wake in full memory, untainted by doubt and aglow.

She took my hand. "Oh, honey," she said. "You just need to accept that you are who you are. I loved to travel, I loved my books, and I loved my movies. But I would have given any of them for you."

And before I could answer, she whispered, breaking my heart with her strained little voice, which echoes in me now as I type, "I know you wouldn't make me choose, but I would have if you asked."

As she put the big book aside and I remembered the poem, remembered reading it to her and remembered its name, she obliterated it, and my dream, with a kiss too demanding for refusal, too long for doubt. But I remembered Yeats.

I did not wake, but was wakeful, and I can only vaguely remember what transpired beyond that kiss. But as unaccustomed to everything afterward as I was, and to the aspect of her she had shown so rarely, I never awoke more fully consumed but content.

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