the door

I dreamed again last night, and in my dream, the grass was purple and the sky was red and the trees all stood seventeen miles high. Everything I passed knew my name and smiled at me, and I nodded back at them and knew their names even though I never had seen them before in the waking. One green eyed beauty rushed up to hug me and called me “Daddy” and I rubbed the top of her aquamarine scaled head in between the horns and opened my mouth to call her name—then sat up in a sweat and panic.

Why couldn’t I remember my own child’s name?

I looked around, but in the dark, I couldn’t recognize the shape of the pile of clothes over my computer chair or the smooth feel of my sheets. My hand on the light switch was pale and malformed and I knew I was in the wrong body, the wrong room, the wrong world. I hurried to record my dream before it faded, but could only recall random bits that I knew I had dreamt before.

I stared out the window at the dawn touched blues and golds of the sky, the green grass, the short trees. I knew I was a stranger here. Even the cashier at the off license where I bought a candy bar every morning for breakfast would not meet my eyes or remember my face. I was alone.

A faint scratching caught my ear and I looked down. There, under the abortive attempt to record my dream my left hand had drawn a sketch.

It was a tree. An oak tree, ancient and gnarled. As I watched, my left hand drew faint lines marking a threshold, then the arch of a door. Last of all, it drew a simple latch. I had never seen the tree before, but it was more familiar than my bedroom. I knew it. It was my way back home.

With trembling hands, I called in sick, then grabbed the pocket knife from my nightstand and stuck the picture in my back pocket. All morning long I searched, tramping along back roads and cutting through fields until I had become entirely lost. And then, as the sun stood high in the sky, I found it.

It was an old tree, grown up and over a stone fence, but the gnarls and branches were exactly as I had drawn them. I fell on it, embraced it as a long lost friend, and then took out the knife.

It took most of the day to carve the lines of the door accurately. The arc at the top was particularly difficult as it rose two feet above my head. But, as the sun sank and spread gold and purple glory across the sky, I finished the last curve of the latch.

Red light poured out of the keyhole. I lifted the latch. She was waiting for me. Naiema. My daughter.

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