Dream Strangers

Those strangers who sometimes populate

our dreams, those whom we have never met

yet in our somnolence, know well.

How is it they take such fleeting residence

in our dark night minds? Last night, this visitor:

the lovely, tall woman whose name is Lor,

short, I guess, for Laura. She prefers Lor for its

mythic quality, a conceit that may be true of all

dream strangers. We share a mutual but

cautious attraction, the beginning of a courtship.

I feel the irresistible lure into unexplored spaces

of the heart. She shares a ground-floor apartment

with a male roommate, Joe or Tom or Steve, a

monosyllabic who is trouble. Her sister is Pamela,

photos of her frame the hallway. Lor is thin, with

sandy skin and short-cropped blonde hair that

suggest California and sunlit beaches, ocean.

We sit outside her apartment now, afternoon,

plastic deck chairs on a concrete slab, while her

roommate throws a tantrum inside. Sawdust

from a construction project across the street

floats in the air: wooden snow. “Is it always like this?”

I ask, meaning him. “Pretty much,” she admits,

resigned to his behavior for some reason she

fails to elaborate. Later we are inside, her space

daylight in springtime, discretely floral. I have

never seen this place awake, yet the subtle

scent of lilac drifting from her bedroom lingers,

coats me in a kind of memory that folds around me

long after I have finished my first cup of coffee.

c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels, working draft

(part of my new collection, “Unlanguage”)