Escape

Prompt From Sleep is for the Weak

Running away is our theme this week. You could tell me something you once ran away from, or find yourself often running from, or write about something you wish you could escape.

Or tell me what/where you wish you could run TO, what would be your sanctuary? Perhaps imagine yourself free of responsibility. Where would you go? What would you take? What would you do once you got there?

Make it about real life, or an alternative life, or make up a story, about yourself or an invented character. It’s completely up to you.

***

I want to dream no more of the Latin Lover that has haunted my dreams for nigh on twenty years. Sad and sore as she left me, our story ended years ago. And albeit not without regret, I have moved on.

So why do I travel by night to Catalunya at least once a month? Why do my dreams include the passion and poetry of a language unspoken by me for years? I dream of companionship, trust, touch, conversation... a warm, slanting glance from tawny eyes.

I wake with half-formed questions, the ones I never asked so long ago. I wake wishing to shake these dreams, but without knowing how. Meditation has not worked, nor have releasing rituals. I live with the dreams as parasites that sap my energy by dragging me back to a past worked through – not buried – long ago. I spend the rest of the day calming myself, preparing to face another night, and hoping that it will be barren.

'Make contact!' urges a small internal whisper. But 'For what?' sneers the voice of Reason. 'She has a son now, and you have no reason to believe that she remembers your name, your face, or your body.' I was part of a fiery celebration that followed an interlude of war and betrayal, where each spark confined was another affirmation of her survival. She chased, caught, marvelled at... and forgot, perhaps extinguished, many.

Understanding long ago dissolved my bitterness, so why the dreams? And where the escape?