All entries for July 2010

Blake

DISCLAIMER: This is not a short story. This actually happened and I had to write it down before I forgot. Please don't think me mentally disturbed, I found it weird too.

Last night I had a dream. Now, I know this is nothing unusual, especially since I dream every night and always remember them vividily. I think this means I don't sleep well or have a nervous disposition or have a secret desire to be an elephant. Something to that effect.

Anyway. Last night was different. In my dream (which was actually this morning more than last night), I gave birth. It hurt in my dream, and it was very real. Then I had a beautiful baby boy, who I felt love for, I actually felt unbelievable, chest-shattering love. My heart swelled and crushed me from inside out. I was impossibly happy. I left university, and sat around the dinner table in my parent's home, writing lists of possible eternal damnation for the little piece of me I rocked in my arms.

May I remind you, or simply myself, this was just a dream, because even now, a weird love is bubbling in my stomach.

I toyed with Zachary for ages. It is a name I have never considered (no, I am nowhere near birth, but we've all thought about it). "Zachary, yes maybe," I'd thought, but the name didn't fit. I looked down at my boy, my diluted and yet complete, perfect genes, and knew Zachary wasn't right. Now I am awake, I think it is a marvellous name, and have added it to my own mental list (which only contained Molly and Florence for a girl and Oliver for a boy, I'm pretty picky.)

"Blake."

It just fit. He wore it like a comfort blanket I'd knitted with my own fingers, which I then realised, within my dream, that I couldn't knit, and that I'd have to learn. When I awoke, I genuinely swore to myself I will learn to knit before I have a child.

I don't quite remember how it all ended, fizzling into 8am. That weird moment when you try to cling on to a dream, radio static that just keeps missing the station you want, and you know morning is coming, but just one more minute please.

Yet these minutes were years, my baby was 3, and I was teaching Blake to read in a shopping centre with a massive balcony, almost like the inside of Westfields, and Mr. Luck, my A Level Geography teacher was there, and I kept trying to blink him away because he made it less real. Stupidity was slipping in, stupidity in the shape of reality as the beckoning morning taunted me, and my distressed mind tried to clutch at anything from the factual cardboard boxes of my dusty brain, in the shape of a distorted shopping centre and a much adorded teacher. But Blake was as real as ever, as momentarily real as ever, beautiful.

I woke up and cried, not knowing at first why. I went downstairs and as soon as I put the kettle on the phone rang. It was my Mum at work, telling me they needed me to come in to do some odd jobs. I actually cried for the next 15 minutes. I was trying to convince myself all day it was because I was tired and didn't want to go to work and maybe it was just hayfever...

I actually missed a baby that didn't exist, I felt like I'd lost him and I was all to blame. I am highly concerned for my own well-being and well write a story about this soon.

: 09 Jul 2010 23:47 |  Tags: Journal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

To Do List

- Crawl into a large hole

- Crawl into that hole laden down with books

- Stay sober in that hole

OR

- Take enough supplies to be so intoxicated I don't remember ever being in said hole.

: 07 Jul 2010 01:03 |  Tags: Journal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Seasoned Non–Traveller

My aunt has never left the country, growing
crazy in her old age in Somerset, the final, slowing
days of her being spent in one room of her home,
a glass prison, a snow globe shaped dome.

Her conservatory is besieged by globes and maps
where she plots her plans and takes her naps,
as aeroplanes score the sky, surgical instruments
cutting into deathly grey flesh, futile attempts,

To revive something of lost life. Guide books her bible,
planning her epiphany in Europe, dreaming of tribal
dances and poverty, crying in African villages,
like the celebrities on fame-hungry pilgrimages.

She is childless, husbandless, and her heart beats
for Greek columns, tapas, cobbled French streets.
My aunt lives beneath an English sky, wishing
for more, like a puzzle with the sky missing.

: 02 Jul 2010 22:38 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem