Lonely Dreams

By Caroline Winter

Yesterday, I dreamt that I was alive at the beginning of the world,

when everything was an icecap, and I,

encased underneath ten thousand feet of unclouded glacier,

was shouting in a language foreign to my own tongue,

stopping only to observe,

suddenly, and quite detached from the events taking place,

how my lips, my fingertips, the soft exhalation of my breath,

were being metamorphosed into a pool-dark blue to mark

my frigid descent into a new, arctic state,

numbness pirouetting across my skin.

I placed both my palms against the ice,

felt the halcyon spark of connection between myself,

ant-sized and forgotten,

and an entity so vast, and so truthfully accommodating.

I no longer wanted to scream.

Slowly, dulled by the frigid embrace of this coffin-sized bed of frost,

a Stockholm embrace of lonely dependence

at being the only beating heart in the entire Universe,

I shut my eyes, and the iceberg got colder

– it too, knew how to cooperate.

The process began by which I would one day wake,

one billion years later,

in a world where warmth would once again seep into my bones,

leaving only the memory of the cool whisper of a cold kiss

against my skin.

Dream ended, I woke in earnest,

and rushing barefoot to the kitchen,

placed an ice cube against my cheek,

the melting square mingled with the tears

that were already beginning to fall there.

Loneliness is ice cold sometimes.

.

Image: 358611 via Pixabay