Musings of a Dreamer

to thousands of people making phony images and replying to them with their passionate desire to have them as a tshirt to overload the bots with nonsense and junk and send out warnings to shoppers like this:

and now we even have people replying to pictures of baby yoda with “i want this on a tshirt” knowing how ravenous disney is being with copyright in hopes to get the stores taken down altogether

A hundred monarchs resting on their long flight have lit here, on these green needles.  You reach out.  The tired creatures crawl onto your arms, wings slowly parting and closing, parting and closing, as they breathe.  They rest, covering you in magic.  You spin in the sunlight, laughing.  You are very small, and they glow like candles behind colored glass.

I will trade you one awful, inescapable thing for this one golden moment in time, this moment of honeycomb light and a warm autumn day tapering to endless evening.

Look, you have made the trade.  You can take your memory back anytime, but you do not need to bear it always.  Now I will hold it for you so that for a while it can be smaller and further away.

You are walking home. Home of your choosing, home you made. It has been snowing all day, and it still is; a pure, gentle blanket coming down in large, soft flakes, making everything quieter.

You are not cold. There is no wind, and you have a pocket of warmer air in your oversized coat, just enough to protect from the chill except where it reddens your cheeks.

It is coming on evening, but not yet dark. Clouds and snow create a cocoon of soft grey-white that seems a safe and soft as your coat.

In the distance, church bells start ringing. The snow has muffled most sounds but it magnifies this one, each chime falling into the stillness and lingering to mingle with the notes that follow, until the bells and your soft, shuffling footsteps seem to be the only sound in the world.

After a day’s worth of singing and being, it’s all come to rest here. You sit on an old log, its surface smooth from wear. In the middle of you are flames, tall enough to provide the warmth against the cold of darkness, but short enough to see the faces of those across from you.

There are moments of silence as the fire has entranced all, gazing into—and beyond—the flickering blaze, before one soul is sparked with bravery. They break the silence with confession, speaking lowly. Their sobering tone reclaims the rests’ minds from the fire. One by one the stories come out, each sharing parts of themselves until the last spark leaves for the sky.

Can I trade one memory with the secrets of that campfire, for a rotten, sticky memory that will not leave my mind? For that one summer night when we were all friends for a time? Can I bring out the light when I have to fight the dark? Can I remind myself to confess so that the flames burn it to sparks?