Oneironauts

Last night I had a dream.  You and I lived in a town at the bottom of a valley in a house made of brown sticks.  The rest of the buildings in town were sleek and modern and looked like knives.  Our house was far away from the rest, and through our window we could see the whole valley.  At the mouth was a volcano; tall like a mountain, with snow crusted on the peaks and rings of clouds circling the top.  As we looked out the window and across the valley, the volcano began to rumble and a great spout of water gushed from its peak.  The water poured down the mountain and crashed into the town.  The flood raged through the valley, engulfing the buildings and the people inside them.  As the waters reached our house I turned from the window and pressed my face into your chest.  Your shirt was green and smelled like autumn.  As we prepared to be swallowed by the flood, the water split in two and bowed around our tiny house made of sticks.  Our front door rattled and flecks of water sprayed in through the cracks and I felt your arms tense around me.  When the flood was over, we looked out our window again.  The valley was empty; no buildings or people or water.  Only us.  You and me and our house made of sticks.  And the volcano was quiet.

Memories and Mailboxes;

Tiny items are placed with care in a mailbox, buried beneath the earth, and forgotten; a yellow plastic lion, three marbles (one red, one blue, and one like the eye of a cat), a few black and white photos, and a silver bell.  The ground is soft and swallows it entirely.  Small hands pack the rusting mailbox beneath thick layers of warm, wet dirt.  It is forgotten.

Frost locks the mailbox under ground, where sleeping trees nestle their roots and wrap themselves around it.  The contents inside grow old; the pictures yellow, the bell tarnishes, and the marbles dull. The yellow lion, though gnarled and now flecked with mold, is still stoic and poised.  They remain forgotten as the ground unfreezes and freezes, again and again, until the earth is settled and the surface is calm.

No one remembers the mailbox or what is inside it.  No one remembers where it came from or that it once belonged to a pair of small, young hands.  No one remembers it has even been buried.  It exists now only in the ether of binding roots and heavy subsoil.  But sometimes, every so often, the roots will loosen their grip on the mailbox, and it is shifted slightly towards the surface.