The Golden River of Time

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. I jerked awake and heard myself say out loud: ‘But am I dead?’ even as I shuffled my feet beneath the quilt to keep it from the spreading waters rippling from the spot I last saw her on the dawn-touched River. Thought I saw her. Would have taken an oath that she had been there before me on the banks of the Golden River of Time, pleading for rescue.

I was not dead. But I was also not sleepy. Now I am still not sleepy but I am sorely tired. There was no Queen in my room, no River flowing through the house pulling time backwards. I know that but... still I question it even as my breath catches in my throat and I hear the thrum of my pulse echo in my mind.

There is much work to be done, repairing Time. My body, my spirit, the warring nature within me sends me reminders when I am at my most vulnerable.

It is the dreams.

I am dreaming of the people we helped through hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, lashing rains, and roaring fires. People that have lost their homes, their past, and their assurance of the future.

They are in my dreams and I reach toward them but my hands are full. I can’t reach them all. They reach out to me, pleading for the repair, grasping at my shadow. Then they vanish, just as did the Queen. Their expressions are of hope being dashed. And I feel the sting of failure. Once vanished, will they ever return?

I dream of the people I love and have lost. Am still losing. Can no longer reach. Probably some of the lost are also me. Some of the timelines must surely be mine. Some of the voices are echoes of my own. I feel the tug holding me to the Earth, repairs yet to be made keeping me tethered.

Dreams are odd.

I wake terrified to move my arm and feel cold sheet, not warm and sleep-dampened spouse. So I stay still until my heart stops pounding and I dare to move to prove that I’m not alone. The hairs on my arm feel their warmth first, that essential creature comfort that I long to savor but can't relax into the peace.

Simply: wide awake. I dream of places I’ll never see and wake up choking on tears. How do you mourn what you’ve never had? How can regret and longing for — for what?— the country of my ancestors? Walking up hills of olives or across bogs and lichen, scrubbed by the wind? Why does that make my heart pound and sleep flee?

The things I should have said.

The things I said but shouldn’t have.

The people I’ve neglected.

The people I should have walked away from.

Selective hearing.

Who can sleep with such a list to assemble? It’s Fear of Missing Out. Our time is short and realizations hit me then BOOM. I am summoned by the dreams and the slow backward passage of the River.

Now it’s 65 minutes until the alarm goes off and I won’t rush going back to bed and waking him. He knows of the repair work but not the toll it takes of me.

It’s fear. Anxiety. Regret. Mortality. Loss. My brain just keeps peddling a bike with no wheels. This will pass. I’ll find the groove again where I can sink into at night and rest.

Where the whispers of ‘loss!’ and ‘temporary’ and ‘beware!’ are hushed. Today isn’t that day, though. Today my mind is racing and my heart is pounding and I’m going to give up and just make the coffee already and get started. So; this time it's the Queen.

If you are here with me, in all of this; you aren’t alone. You've found me once, and like the Queen you'll know When to Find me.