dream deep

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."
-Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray. 

So I'm leaving and you're almost dead and any second now they will push the plunger in that proverbial needle, and the fact that you will soon be dead is enough to set things going like clockwork. Perhaps in the last few moments you'll see all the things you wanted to see, like they say you will. All the cars you drove and all the roads you ran down and all the places you've ever seen and loved. The gun you stole when you were fourteen and the boy you hated when you were in that place. That cliff where we went diving and the stars in that sky the night that everything happened. The colour of your mother's favorite dress. And then one by one, all the faces of all the people you've known will fade away and soon you'll find that death is an easy thing to do. In fact, there's nothing easier. It doesn't count as running away, so they don't get to hate you for this. You remember nothing, you know nothing because you have nothing to know. You're THERE, that's all. 
So just breathe. I promise I'll come. I promise you'll remember, and it'll be just like before. It will be like this. One day perhaps I'll die or perhaps I'll not die. It all depends on the atomical and anatomical balance of the universe and the regenerative circumstances and the natural world and also how many people choose the low-fat green tea soya lattes at Starbucks, so it's complicated in a simple sort of way that nobody ever knows how to explain. There are dead people who look alive and live people who are dead. But I'll come, I do promise that. But you won't remember me, and that's the saddest thing, really. I suppose I'll miss you terribly. It's what people do, don't they? If I miss you and you miss me then perhaps every single time will be like the first. 

Perhaps I'll be a bird. Not a blue one, but maybe a little brown one or a red crow. I'll apprentice to some evil witch with yellow eyes and black teeth who kidnaps children but has too big a heart to eat them, and when she lets them go I'll be the one to leave the breadcrumb trails that will lead them home. Or maybe I'll be a fish. Not a goldfish or one of those pretty things with big pockets like hamsters but perhaps a red salmon or a long dark eel. I'll leap up entire waterfalls and dodge grizzlies and fall in love with some other red salmon that was a person once upon a time long ago in another place and time. Then I'll die. Grass is fine too. I'll be Irish grass by an Irish roadside under a grey Irish sky and get digested by some sheep with rings in their ears. Or maybe that wouldn't be so good. Either way, I'll find a way to make it happen. I'll find a way to die. Right now it doesn't seem so important, but the needle's almost all the way down and soon I won't exist. I don't mean to be a misanthrope and I don't know what this will lead to. Needle's almost done. I'm not sure whether Wilde means anything when he says what he says, but he's a little bit sad and a little bit lost, so that's perfect for the occasion.