days – One Whose Name Is Writ In Water

I dreamed I died. And that was a relief. There isn’t any trying after death. My soul was made. How could death unmake it? The book couldn’t fit inside the grave. It had grown in the night. The wind blew its pages around. Had I been the tree after all? A little of my former self remains. And after all the storms and sunny days, was I the only one who couldn’t attended? Last night, I dreamed I died and then awoke, not on the other side of death, but to see: the room exactly as I left it. The furniture standing in its place. An empty space beside me. My wife busy downstairs. My whole life lives inside this house. My house contains what I call home. The world lies where my stoop begins. If I should die again tonight, I know exactly what to do. If I should wake to find I am alive, then who knows what happens next.

Whole days feel like funerals. Nights come and go. Days too long for recording. I go, and asked the mountain top, Yes? And then it occurs to me. The wind is a thing on a list of things, too. Still, who can feel good facing a new direction, when the old one seems so here, so present? I wrote a thousand stories in the book. The book assumed the characteristics of its writer, and when I looked it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the man who initially put his pen to paper. I called for experts to test the results. And they did. And I asked them, Well? The answers they gave were satisfactory, but just. And just… Tonight, I seek to step out of my house. Seeking is enough. Seeking means this isn’t enough. And just as I am about to die, I ask, What else? And finally the words of a book I used to know by heart come rushing in to fill the waste. This isn’t hell, but paradise…