2022. the year in dreams…

I dreamt of liberation and of fires. I dreamt of you loving me and me loving you. I dreamt of fields that we run the way our dogs run, tails wagging, legs churning, driven almost mad by the possibilities. When I was a teenager, a friend once described heaven this way: If you put every single person in a room with the creative instrument of their choice for one year and then on the same day you let them all out, that day would be heaven. I have thought about this in so many different ways in the decades since I heard it. Today I think that it is not the creative room that is the pleasure, but it is the moment we come together again after being isolated, making, for so long.

I dreamt of coming together; held in each other’s arms, held in each other’s gazes. I dreamt of being seen by you, your eyes drinking me in slowly the way the moss drinks in the rain. I dreamt of your touch, of feeling your hands, my eyes shut tight against the sun, the grass tickling the hairs on the soft fleshy part of my ears.

I dreamt of forests towering over us, feeding us oxygen and shadows. I dreamt of rain and winds bathing us and carrying us home. I dreamt of home, our feet on each other’s laps, our fingers intertwined, dishes in the sink to be washed whenever we feel like getting up which we will not until we have talked our way into silence, and quieted our way into sleep, and slept our way into dreams and dreamt ourselves into waking, the night a discolored memory, our bodies hungover from the gasping feeling of drowning in love and comfort.

I dreamt of a table with books and papers, games and toys, cards and sundry objects, a tiny sculpture of an alligator, a plate with the remnants of grape bunches, the skin of an eaten avocado, a half empty jar of chili oil, the rind of a cheese, the crumbs of a missing hunk of bread, a pitcher that needs re-filling. I dreamt of us all there, — you me, everyone we know — laughing until we cannot laugh any more, talking until we are drunk with the sounds of our voices, lapsing into a silence filled only by the music, and the sound of someone in the kitchen getting more cheese for us all and perhaps some water with bubbles that will tickle us going down.

I dreamt of days turning into nights around us, mosquitos and fireflies, crickets and gnats, the distant rustling of the breeze disturbing the sheets of…