meditations on a leather-bound journal, pt. v

I slept fitfully yesterday. I had a dream, a terrible dream. It was about her. I didn't recognise the face but I know it was her. We were friends, in the dream. Walking, laughing. I parted ways with her, left her to walk home, went home whistling. When I got home I learned she'd died. Drowned. I felt--there aren't words. I was angry, confused, empty. I'd just found her. In the dream, even, I'd just found her. Now she was gone.

I didn't wake up in a panic, as one might. I woke up in utter despair. I'd lost something beautiful. I could--can--still feel it. I've resolved never to lose her again.

I opened her notebook again. There would be no closing it, not even if she said something I didn't want to hear. This time, her words were comforting. "I had a dream tonight." And so did I! She didn't trust me, that's okay.

She wrote words I didn't really understand, but I felt like I would later. They were cryptic. Images, symbols, half-finished thoughts. I caught a thread of the same despair I'd felt when I awoke thinking I had lost something beautiful--something that never came to fruition, something that existed only in potentia, but something.

Listen. I'm getting on the freeway again soon. I want to go back to the rest area I first met her. Or didn't meet her. I want to do this right.