I Wake Up

I wake up sad about something that never happened. Even my dreams feel far away lately. I try to talk about them like I always do when I wake up but the details are muddy and it feels like I never went to sleep at all. I assume you were there because sad isn’t really the feeling it’s more like a gumminess on my insides or a hollowing out. I wake up feeling cheated like something important was taken from me, and I could get it back if only I knew what it was. 

Sometimes I think about Montana like a place I’ve never been before, something I saw once in a movie, something on a billboard or at an airport. I’m interested in how time can wrap around itself and how the most far away moments stay close and the close ones feel far away even while they’re happening. I wonder if there are small shadows of me sitting on the river bank at 4 am. Because must it be true that we always leave something behind? 

The active imagination is such a ruthless thing. I let mine wander out into the poppy fields lately and it seems like I stopped doing the work I was setting out to do. What I am having right now feels too brief and I’ll hate myself later if I don’t really sit down at this table. Pretty soon this too will be far away and concrete on bare feet and windows down and hand over foot up a ladder and I’ll wonder where that went too.