DEATH SPARES NOT THE DREAMER

(Original Image by Ivana Cajina)

Death spares not the dreamer. Words I found floating in my cerebellum like tannins at the bottom of a wine glass. I searched Google for their origin, and I was brought to scripture. Deuteronomy 13: 1—5, which prescribes the death of the dreamer were he to espouse gods unfamiliar. “You must purge the evil from among you” was the last incantation, and, humorously so, I became the infidel in question, for I am a dreamer and little more. I may have no use, but I have nonetheless emerged from the void to flutter in iridescent mystery just beyond the bounds of periphery.

It is Spring 2021. The sky is open, endless, a benevolent blue with wispy white clouds like a child's questions to answers eternal. The ground has given birth to green, to flowers and their faithful insects. The breeze is soft and warm, and a bottle of Viognier sits open upon the patio table as children laugh in the distance. How then does it feel like everything is dying? Disease of the mind perhaps. Wine gnats floating dead in the glass. Shall I pour another? My questions are becoming cliché. So are my answers. I no longer see the imperative in speech, in spiritual intercourse. I no longer know what to say past the paradox that haunts me, that I have everything a man could want and, still, I am so lonely, so miserable. To what target do I draw my arrows? Their pointed ends always seem to come 'round.

There is little to speculate on that has not already been covered. The universe was born from quantum chaos, why should my world be so different? There used to be flashes of lighting, of fire alight in the darkened distance. Now, there is only this stable candle I hold to my breast whose little light follows the familiar path. I can hear the children farther on, laughing in the night. They play as children play. They dream as dreamers do. They have nothing but time before them, more than an eternity to figure it all out. They know where the sun rises. They've been told, and so they dance in nothingness expecting, and yes, receiving their deliverance as the rest of the world watches from the hills of nowhere.

I see movement in the moonlight. I draw my beat and launch my iron tip through decades of wasted time. And I am struck in the backside, blood black as sin, as others limp along towards the light.

The children of the earth are waiting for this dreamer. They have their arrows affixed towards the heart like good Christian soldiers. And I am just about ready for my comeuppance, for I no longer belong in this predictable world of ours.