Red Cedar

(I wrote this in the summer after a series of dreams, crafted this post, and then left it to rot. Against some other judgement, I am including it here today – part of cleaning out old posts to make way for new ones).

Lately, my dreams pen adventure novels, with a plot that hangs thin in the middle – suspended only by the threads that tie my nightly ritual to my morning routine…

With no apparent beginning, each sequence opens to me carrying an armload of low-tech weapons – rifles and shotguns – preparing hiding places in bunkered houses, lining cubbyholes with food and ammunition. I do not know, but sense these treasures are stolen from elsewhere, that I have procured them without leaving fingerprints and scurried them home to make us safe. I also think there are others carrying out the same tasks, all over the unrecognizable city where this takes place. These sweating moments characterize the onset of my dreams, besieged but purposeful, my hands deft and unafraid with the guns and explosive materials, as though working with this purpose all my life. As in many dreams, the scenes are brief, and fragmented – my sleep-mind unable to complete the details before we skip ahead.

We are finished, then, and take a break on the front steps; my hand rests against his knee as we sit in the descending heat of the summer evening. It is as though waiting, and as scripted – as anticipated – each time we finish, they show up. Police like pitbulls populate these nights, lifting the mouldering dustruffle to look under the bed, peering through gapped floorboards into the subfloor. I hold my breath lightly, not allowing a sweat to break because that would give *it* away – what it? I am never clear why we are building the bombs, or caching the arms – such is the fog draped over all but the most striking moments.

[I can only imagine this is for a grand and as-yet fabricated cause, perhaps one involving the emancipation of something important or the declaration of some bold statement.

I wish I knew.]

We use false names to the police, but occasionally I slip up and use my real one. My dream-friend looks cross when I do this; he never fucks up the small details. I know better, but even living underground I have trouble giving up the *me* from before. Last night, he was Keith and I wanted to be Jane but in the flustering moment of questions I became Kay instead. Apparently my subconscious conjured alliteration in naming convention – Keith and Kay. A flat name, yes, but with interesting consonant possibilities. K as in Kalashnikov; K as in Kiss.

There are never last names, but the pitbulls don’t seem to mind, they are less interested in us than in the house we occupy.

I have no idea how the dream-me remains so outwardly calm when they come to the door, ushering them in as if we have nothing to hide, appearing placid while they dismantle our cupboards one tin at a time. Like a leaflet handed out on a street corner I am quivering at the gutter, the twitch imperceptible before a big gust blows me clear-away. These dreams are less about building, caching, stockpiling – and more about waiting, always on the front step, while they trammel our belongings and shout orders to each other. More to the point: they are about waiting with him, about survival instinct surging between bodies twinned only in tension.

[Apparently my waking life doesn’t inspire in me even a plausible construction of what the cause might be. Sometimes I wonder if this imaginatory world is a map I have not learned to read yet.]

There is no talking while we wait, afraid to give ourselves away, so I don’t know much about him other than grey eyes – a protective talisman in the late afternoon light. We do not run away, or yell out to the neighbours for help, though there is much danger to us should the caches be found. We are perfect waiting, passing support to and fro through glances and light touches to the hand, the back of the neck. A kiss waits on the surface, possibly never to be break if we are separated and taken away.

Do we get caught? I am not sure, for it ends there on the steps before the police manage to find the small cracks that might indicate a break in the wall, or reach their hands above visual range in the hallway closet. I suspect we don’t, that tears in the wallpaper are overlooked because our home is so obviously shabby and because they don’t have dogs to sniff out the explosive powders so carefully concealed in the jars for flour and sugar.

But there is no reason to believe this except that often I find myself back in the same house, with a new armload of provisions; carrying, concealing and waiting as though each time we forget the nights before.

[If they would catch us, maybe the dreams would end there, or maybe I would know what exactly we keep preparing for. ]