Oracle

Before I knew my power

You coaxed me to the looking glass

Stood behind me, your arms on my waist

Nuzzled my neck

Lightning sizzled across my skin

Your façade pressing into me

Sternum to spine

You stripped me of my defense

It was a trick

I fell through the looking glass

To an alternate place and time

You stole myself,

They knocked me from my tower

I didn't stop wanting you

Even as I sat in desperation

But I found it

It was within

I reclaimed what you stole, myself

I reclaimed you

Still tall with dusty gray hair

But young and impetuous

I drew you to me to show you

what I had become

And we embraced through time

We bathed in ice and snow

I tasted your frozen breath

Our bodies tingling with cold

We danced in fire and stars

burned in the heat of suns

You called me the oracle

An avatar

A Still Heart

I went to sleep that night with no thoughts of you in my conscious mind. It had been more than a season since I'd seen you in person and a lifetime since I'd felt you. I tumbled into the dreamscape like Alice down the rabbit hole, and hardly caught my bearings before I saw the white, sterile hallway. It led down a corridor and to another room that looked more like a room where a serial killer kept his victims than a hospital room. Your lifeless body was on the table and an inept team was trying desperately to revive you. The tools looked archaic and the walls were dripping gray and black brick and it was all wrong. Something was so very wrong as they cracked your chest and the blood ran side to side. Then, all I could see was the sinew and bone rent from side to side, pushed back and then the still organ. Everyone in the room turned to me as if they expected me to be there, as if it was my turn to try - as if I had been called in to revive you.

Touching you inside was a religious experience, horrific and deeply real. Even as the seconds rushed by and I massaged your quiet heart with my naked hands, I could smell the rusty smell of blood, taste the tang of its mist and feel the warmth of your recently stilled flesh. My heart was willing yours, coaxing it... "beat, please beat, pump, beat, thump," faster and faster it sang out, begging yours to join it. My eyes were salty my hand was shaking from the pressure of walking a delicate line between not crushing your heart and pumping hard enough to make it start.

Your eyes were closed and your angelic face was perfectly still and silent. But, my fingers, urgently probing for any sign of motion, felt something - a skip. I knew you would come back if I asked you just the way you wanted to be asked. I felt a slight pulsing beneath the pads of my fingers and my heart leapt, but I never saw your eyes open. Instead, mine opened to the blaring siren of my cell phone alarm. I crawled out of bed and stood in the shower, shivering. I nearly picked up the phone to hear your voice, but realized that it made no sense. We were no more connected than we were in the moments before I drifted to sleep with only thoughts of another in my mind. I hope all is well with you.

What can you do...

When you see the train headed for the end of the tracks and the brakes are out. Not a whole lot I expect. You can run around the train trying to stop it, turn it around, change its course some or just slow down, but if the train is full steam ahead, you're going off the edge anyway. Which wouldn't sound so bad if this was a toy train, but it's a ten ton steel locomotive ready to plunge into the abyss and smash into pieces. You might feel a little better being the one that runs around trying to save everyone on board, but it's a train wreck - there's nothing to be done. Why not sit next to the other person on the train and watch it hit the rocks? Then you can sing the old Neil Diamond song "Love on the rocks, ain't no surprise." And you can lift your broken body off the ground and keep moving. But you can't be too angry. You, after all, were the one who decided to get on the train.

What to say, what to say

I haven't seen you in at least 7 years. I was underage at that bar and drinking brandy over some silly joke to impress a boy that didn't know I existed. You were there, quite a bit older than me... at least six years older. I remember sitting in a flimsy resin lawn chair on the bar's patio next to you and talking awkwardly about this and that. I can't even remember the conversation. You were cute with a prominent nose and handsome features, but short - yes, I seem to remember that you were 5'2 or 5'3 or so. That didn't bother me, mind you. You asked me if I wanted to hang out for a little while, and I drove off with you, leaving my car in the gravel parking lot across the street. We pulled up at your parent's house, and you showed me in through the kitchen, past the living room down to the basement. I recall some photos on the fridge and family photos in the living room that assured me you were part of a normal family just like mine. Once in the basement, the advances were quick and decisive. We were kissing in moments and touching and caressing. It was already well past 4 a.m. and we crawled up to your bedroom, careful not to wake your parents. What happened there I can't say I'm exactly proud of. We didn't make love, but we crossed at least one line I would have preferred to have held steadfast on. Soon it was dawn and we were sneaking out to the car so you could drive me back to mine. Later that morning I would rear end another car on my way to work, forever burning this moment into my memory. I can still remember your plaid basement couch, the brown blanket on your bed, and other things I'd rather I'd forgotten.

So now I'm sitting here and we're new social media friends. We're also both grown up, married and far past any of the silliness of that evening. Since we literally never saw one another before or after that, however, I find myself at a complete loss for words...