-Found & Lost

I yanked it from a dream like a stubborn weed and emerged to morning half-sleep in triumph--25, 36, 47. As I rolled around and came to myself, I fought to remember, to take the code with me into the day, feeling it was vitally important somehow.

For me it isn't the comeuppance of final exams after no study, or of finding myself in front of a packed assembly with no clothes on. My back-in-school dreams have always consisted of standing in front of a bank of lockers in an impossibly long hallway. With my books trapped inside and class starting, I stand spinning the dial right left right to no effect. Though no bell rings, I know I am late. No-one surrounds me. I find an office and see only faceless bureaucrats behind walls of glass, and blank, yawning monitors on desks whose chairs are empty.

But then, in dreams colored by the drugs that now only half work on the pain, my locker opens, finally. It's easy--25, 36, 47, right left right and open it swings. A breakthrough, and even in sleep I know it. Alone still, I crouch at the open door. Left-behind things litter the floor of the locker, chaotic, anonymous--featureless texts, too-small gym clothes, mismatched socks. I don't know what I'm seeking, what to take away.

So I pulled from this dream that which has always blocked me to find myself in a different place, but no further along, faced with a collection of blurry useless things. As I opened my eyes and considered it, much of the triumph evaporated. I take what remains of the feeling and cherish it for now. Life presents few such moments lately. Perhaps I've gained some control over the direction of my dreams, if that means anything.

Positive is hard work, now. I search to find meaning in the numbers, in the rubble they reveal to me. All I see in them, or in these words you're reading, is myself alone in a long hallway, between other places that I could be, should be. The more it seems apt, the more I must stretch and groan to make it so. I wasn't sure I'd end up here when this started.

I found no schedule in the pile. Somewhere a bell rings.