A Dream

 I dreamed of working. 

He was present but distant. 

I 'd be proud to say we worked together--a symbiosis-- but ours was uncooperative. There was an unspoken anger that wasn't our own. I laughed, talked to friends, congratulated myself for my work ethic. He persisted in his way, but couldn't be happy for my perseverance. He stayed to outperform me. He stayed to make me feel selfish for my commitment, to question the thing that drew him to me. 

He dreamed of corralling me, of spiders, of driving, and me living outside. But there was no expanse. I came to the grass, but not by choice. The spider came from me-- or rather made me-- but she had a keeper he didn't want me to see. The keeper didn't resemble him--the man I know--but the bloodline is the same. 

I wore things I would never wear: a 60's nightgown and a perpetual look of fear. 

The scene was cast in the home of the strongest woman in my family. 

 

My dream was similarly housed. Both dreams started with work, then a party. I missed his introduction, but squatted-- folding inward-- when his band started to play. There was a purple light. I felt halted, interrupted. 

He didn't give me bandages in his dream, but my hurt was ever-present. It furnished our home and bookended all of our interactions. 

Mine was a searching. He entertained while I waited to close the gap. "I'll put something on we both like and find him." I changed my pants and shoes in front of partygoers, and maybe that's when he decided to leave. I went to find him, moving characteristically fast. A personal affront, a chronic misunderstanding. I wanted him. My gait matched my usual cadence, but I never caught up to him. He called my name, but I didn't hear. He stopped all advances.

I warned a friend of the danger on my street and she said she knew. 

The spider lived in our bathroom. I wept in the bathroom. Bathed. Grew despondent.  He grew to rip at black mold and be terrorized by a presence akin to his own. My twin spider watched him after his first offense. She morphed into the mother spider he already feared, resented. I've never had a mother and he's never been afraid of spiders. 

He hardly ever looked at me in either dream. In his, my twin and mother selves stared. My own face pleaded. 

In mine, I saw friends, a crowd and him. When I started walking, I only saw my legs, but never where I was going. I came back home and collapsed on a lawn chair and slept. I lay on our dining room table and woke on a drafting table. He stood over me. I woke up. 

He asleep stayed to break my arm. He ruined my art. He dragged me, unconscious, to his work. I was in the boardroom, but looked like a secretary. He asked what I was wearing as I implored, "You dressed me, remember?" 

Our child is born, my mother spider watches, confronting him with a stare. He threatened to take our baby away. Police came and cuts on my arms and legs emerged. Scabbed, but raw. "She has a problem." I stayed for our daughter. He later accused me of neglect and nailed my right hand to a path stone in our front garden. The neighbors stayed inside. He followed as I walked to her room, crying. My bosom bleeds as I take her from me. I plead louder than I ever had, "You can't." 

I started sleeping in her room with my body pressed to the door. 

Remembering now, I long for my dream, thinking the expanse between us kinder than the frontier he wrested from me. In my family home, I was displaced. 

In my dream, I saw tadpoles nibbling at my feet, giving me an infection. He couldn't understand my "carelessness". I knew tadpoles lived in the pool, but I didn't conceive of the damage they could inflict. 

I never let him hold our daughter. He saw his actions unfold before him and was incapacitated by what he saw. 

 

In my dream, I helped Isabella with her art. I talked excitedly with Karen, Carlin and Stella. I looked at him with adoration. In his, we were alone with no help to be found. Our daughter unnamed.