musing on a thursday morning

Sometimes I feel like I invaded this life I live - a life that couldn't possibly be mine. A two-year-old child, a home in a somewhat suburban northish area outside of Seattle, a husband, friends who bring me Valentine's Day cookies, and notes waiting in my in-box. All of this just couldn't possibly belong to me.



I am still the girl living in a too-tall apartment next to The Burrough. This girl lives in a dreamworld but occupies a ghost's space riding the bus to her job in downtown Seattle. She eats dinner in front of the television or sitting at an empty kitchen table reading a book. She ascends steep stairs to the third story each evening, climbs into a white-sheeted bed, whispers goodnight to her cats and sleeps. In her dreams she wanders long gray landscapes. She scans the indistinct horizon for familiar silouhettes that never surface, only the gray-green mist against silver hilltops, her steps soft on grass. She wakes in the dark, blinking eyelashes against the gathering memories. She feels a deep sense of gnawing loss that can't be fed. These small stretches of dreaming sleep are punctuated by this, the waking and wondering and feeling as though she should burst from her bed and scour the dark for the lost piece. In the morning, the dreams are mostly forgotten.




Just like in the mornings of these days now that I spend with Bean and Chip, the memory of my life before is gauzy and vague, a feeling of something hovering off in the distance.