we are allowed to dream.

Some of us dream the awful waking dream, the tiny dream of life. Best we can do in the hardhard day to day. Some others go seeking dreams drawn for them carefully, dreams in vast rooms, in lights upon screens, words in dusty books.

You, as your body floats in the deep dark ocean, yet grasping its precious cargo, have another dream. A dream of the days before you set out on this ill-fated mission, those calm and placid days before the agitations: one swell evening, a holiday in your hometown, a stroll on the beach, a celebratory evening with light fireworks. Soothing scene. Families all picnicked and gone; the older children skulk about, watching one another in the twilight.

Here the air smells sandy, salty, sexy.

A woman younger than you sits with a group around a small fire; with her eyes she shows that she sees you, here, alone. Her group goes off playing down the beach, voices lightening. She remains. The fireworks begin and you are left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks. You sit here on the beach, as she sees you beside and behind this rock. She doesn’t know you but in your mind she does, she knows your secrets, your pasts, knows you can be trusted to the death, steadfast and sterling, man of inflexible honour down to your fingernubs. She sees that your hands and face are working and she leans back to see the bursting fireworks and catches her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there is no one to see but you and she and when she reveals you know she can hear the panting of your heart, your hoarse breathing, she knows the passions of men like you….

Huh. Odd dream to have at the end here. A bit lechy, but whose to say, and another firework expands and she leans back her garters ablue to match she leans back ever so far and something queer is flying through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark, a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up and up, and in the tense hush you are both breathless as it goes higher and she leans back more and more to look up after it, high, high, nearly now out of sight, her face suffused with the divine, entrancing blush, straining back, nainsook knickers, the fabric holding the skin, and she lets you and she sees you and she is trembling in every limb and

that be it for you, bub.