I Dreamed Last Night

In the dream, there’s a garden. It’s beautiful. It has flower beds arranged to make a maze that I walk through, dazed by the scent. Although each bed is small, plants grow high at each side, obscuring the sightline more than a few feet in front of you, so the walk is unguided, with no destination, a mystery tour in miniature.

There’s a hedge separating the garden from a house. The house also cannot be seen properly. An arch cut into the hedge is the only way to pass from one to the other. Everything is slightly overgrown, as though nobody has tended to it for some time.

I go through the arch, stooping a little, dodging spiderwebs that aren’t there. A door, a farmhouse door in two parts, opening at top or bottom or both, is fully open. Somebody is standing just inside, just out of view. She turns and looks toward me but not at me; she’s small, her hair is loosely pulled back and held with something elastic. It’s blue, a bright blue, more a turquoise, and I know as soon as I see it who she is.

She seems occupied with something, not acknowledging me as I approach with my head pushed forward in curiosity. I want to ask her what she’s doing but the voice, the words, aren’t there. She stands in the doorway now, holding a small watering can made of tin. She lifts her head and I see her face for the first time: I know her, I’ve seen her so many times before, but she’s different this time. Her eyes seem too far away, her skin is too dark, too much like she’s been in the sun. She never liked the sun.

She looks at me. Her face looks unnatural now, heavily made-up. Even on nights out she preferred just the barest of cosmetics. This is not right.

She should smile. She knows me. Instead, she just looks with empty, uninterested eyes as if she were reading a train timetable or watching people from a balcony.

It’s then that I see her mouth, her lips too close together, held in a pout by something inside. I say her name, a question rather than a greeting. Nothing changes.

And then I understand. I know why she looks so much like and still so much unlike herself, why her face seems to be falling into planes more suited to a prone figure than to someone standing upright.

It’s how she looked the last time I saw her; laying unmoving and unwakeable, cushioned in white satin, protected by pale wood.

I drop before her, no strength in my legs. “I’m sorry”, I tell her. “I just didn’t know.” She looks through me, taking her watering can and moving, dreamlike, purposeless, past me and into the garden.

I can do nothing. Just stay there, kneeling, powerless, sobbing the same thing over and over again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I’m so so sorry,” Again and again, feeling my face burn with pain and regret, eyes blinded by tears.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…” Again and again, without hope, as she walks into the garden and leaves forever.