"ouch": The ostrich dream
In this dream,
I am standing on a graying prairie in autumn, the air is filled with the moans of flora morning their ephemeral charms.
I am attempting to find myself.
I stand with a thin silvery rope clenched in my hands, pulled tight by unseen forces straining against it in the distance.
I haul myself forward, one arms length at a time, but with each gain on the rope, I feel the air compress into a razor and my skin splits against its pressure.
I keep reining in the rope; my limbs grow textured with red stinging gashes, meticulous and in a grid pattern. My thighs are waffles.
Finally, I spot my tug of war partner at the end of the rope. It is a magnificent grey ostrich, regal and shimmering. This bird is what I’ve been missing, the piece of myself that’s run wild, the piece I need to tame, no, not tame…but exist with, touch. I need to know that it is real, that it exists underneath my fingers. I need to merge with this feeling.
I am close enough to stroke the aging feathers, to see the black marble eye searching my face. We stand quietly trembling, together as a pair in the heart of a dying landscape.
The ostrich whips its head back and runs, the rope rasps across my hands, dying itself red and wet.
My stomach is slumping out my feet. At certain angles around my knees it catches, sticking slightly, like oatmeal.
All I have to say is ouch.
I watch the bird disappear into the horizon again and I wonder if I have enough skin left to do it all over again.