sometimes the hollow is a dream world
Sometimes the hollow is a dreamworld. In the springtime the road is thick with pollen and bees land on my fingers, and the blossoms are bright and frilly as ruffled petticoats a hundred years ago. I am lucky that these are old orchards, not commercial and rarely visited. I am lucky that the vineyards have not overrun this cool dip of valley and that the wildflowers and redwoods here are forgotten by society. It is my forest, my haunting, my dream. I have lived in this tiny pocket of california so long now I sometimes forget my age, when I came here, my first impressions, the passing seasons, the ways I’ve changed. It has been a month now since the day of rupture, evaporation. Sadly, agonizingly, I dream it night after night: not a pleasant dream, but not really a nightmare, just a painful repetition of the reality of that evening and my life collapsing around me. I am home, in the tiny kitchen of our cottage, wearing an old homemade jumper of faded flowers. I am washing old jars I pick