Trading Dreams

Once upon a time there was only a vision. I saw a future I could not know and slowly caught up to the picture in my mind. Moving through time in slow motion, it was suddenly ten years in the making.

Time never stands still, but my memory is frozen in a moment. The picture I imagined was more clear and more beautiful than I could have hoped, and then it was gone in a flash. Was it me? Was it you? Or did I imagine the whole thing? We don't really know whether the imagination created a memory or a memory created the imagination. What we know is that in each moment, there was a reality, but looking back there is nothing.

We once lived a dream like life where everything and anything was possible, but the dream faded into a nightmare. A white tiger standing outside the floor to ceiling glass waited and lurked. One false move, one tiny crack in the door and the tiger would pounce and attack. We lived and loved always fearing the tiger's imminent attack. I tried to run, to divert the tiger to save you, but that meant you were left behind. Nowhere to be found when I returned, the memory faded much slower than it appeared.

Pictures in my mind that haunt my subconscious and mute my consciousness. Always afraid the tiger would return, life became a blur of auto-tuned haze.

I remember the day I wish I could forget and I forget the days I wish I could remember. Floating on air, no tigers, no lions, no fear. Suddenly plummeting to the ground on a jet, hurtling down toward the churning river. Survival? Yes, I walk away, but did I really live, or did I simply enter another plane of existence?

There are pieces of you wandering through the world; pieces of me; pieces we shared and somehow those pieces remind us of everything and nothing. There they are; there you are; and there is nothing.

Suddenly facing a threat of terror I have never known, I escape, they enemy closes in and I have nothing. No protection, no food or water, just my memory and my desperation to cling to whatever existence is left in the wake of massive attacks. Tigers; planes; bombs; they all come toward me with teeth bared and looking to eat my soul.

I start to run, and float as each stride takes me higher, away from danger, running as fast as possible I realize that I have not trained for this, yet here I am racing atop the world with nothing and no one left to find me. As I stop and look down, slowly gliding down to the ground I see a face; a new face. There is a tiger somewhere behind me; white with black stripes and green eyes, but the growling has faded and the magnificent beast walks away.

All those pieces of me, those pieces of you still lay before me in a new palace. Did I trade anything? What is real? Is anything real? Or have I simply traded dreams?