Bookeater
When reality fails you, look to your dream last for answers. At least you will be entertained.
I rode at sunset last night. It was the perfect evening to be alone with my thoughts. The bike grumbled under me like a frustrated hornet and the wind sang sorrowful songs as I pierced its viscous veil.
My thoughts and worry were with her. They had been all day. But what healing can I offer a wounded soul?
When I stopped in the dark to make my bedroll, I prayed that the moonlight would offer some solace and respite for old fools.
The stars had witnessed my ancestors suffer worse actions and effects, not blessing nor condemning them. The constellations know nothing of men and women like us and long since lost count of our failures.
But, as I drift away to the serenade of crickets, I remind myself that out there is a personality who does sympathize with fools. For even they are made in a fear-inspiring way.
I feel I have barely closed my eyes before I find myself in another world.
I was lost in a jungle.
Again.
Canopy as thick as night far above me. Woody vines clung like old regrets to ancient trees. I leaned against the grandfathered bark hoping their wisdom would flow into me. The air was wet as it amplified the calls and cries of the place. Squawks, peeps, screeches—sounds alien to my human ears.
Two stone heads followed me,
enormous, expressionless, ancient.
They looked as if they had been chiseled from the monoliths at Chichen Itza.
They hovered silently at first, but when I asked them questions— the kind that burn in the belly—they only answered in color.
Their stone jaws would flex and out would pour a river of hue.
“Where am I supposed to go?“
Red.
”What does she mean by what she said?“
Blue.
”Do I stay or do I leave?“
Green.
Color after color. Not words, not maps—just saturation.
Each answer bloomed and faded before I could hold it, pouring from this reality into some empyrean realm where lakes burned vermillion into lavender skies.
The trees thinned.
Concrete sprouted like strange orchids.
I stepped through a clearing in the moonlight and into the mall as if into a dream within a dream.
Fluorescent lighting flickered overhead. The escalators hummed like tired prayers. And there—near a shuttered bookstore— the air shimmered. My nose caught the faintest hint of perfume drifting like a thought.
Sweet, smoky, dangerous.
She had been here.
Or maybe was here still, just out of reach.
The scent wrapped around me like silk and memory.
I followed it, heart pounding, but only found a jaguar curled on a bench outside the Sephora.
Its eyes were gold coins.
A rope of a tail flicked in time with a song I couldn't hear.
I tried to read— to gather what was mine again— but every time I opened a book, the jaguar took it between its teeth and swallowed it whole.
Page by page.
Story by story.
Devoured.
I shouted at the stone heads.
“Why won’t you speak to me in a way I understand?”
They glowed with a soft, pale light that vibrated the unreality.
The smell of the perfume deepened— not just in my nose, but in my chest, as if scent had become a memory I could feel with my whole body.
The jungle rustled with indifference.
Or maybe patience. Then a gale came and turned the stoic trees into a riot of motion and sound. The forest dwellers grew quiet and sought refuge.
I don’t remember how I woke up—only that the world smelled like moss, regret, and loneliness and my hands were stained with color.
Maybe the answers aren’t in words, but in the shades we carry beneath the skin— the wild and the quiet, the ache and the fire.
Maybe the jaguar devours what we cling to so something deeper can take root.
And maybe the jungle is not lost at all— but waiting for us to see that sometimes, the only way forward is through the colors of our own silence.
Maybe.
Or maybe, it was the pizza at dinner.
#essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing #dream
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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