Don't Lose (Your Nerve)

I dreamed of trains. The night was restless; I awoke in the early hours and lay awake too long, considering the alcohol still spinning in my head. When I finally fell asleep again, we were chasing imminent departures. She got on the train as I followed along on the platform, but when the doors closed and the wheels started turning, didn't I have her keys in my hand and it was too late to send them with her. Her panicked face barely registered as the train thundered away into the distance, and I glanced up at the display to see when my train would depart, only to realize the doors were closing.

There's a strange rush that takes place in dreams. When everything happens so quickly and yet so slowly. So that I could leap onto the last step and catch the door, but still have time to look down and see that I would lose my bag in the process. So that I could try to grasp it as it fell, and still think of all the things in it I would have to do without as it slipped through my fingers. In the end, having to choose between making the train, reaching the destination (not remembering, now, what it was), and holding onto the keys, the ID cards, whatever it is in a purse that gives you access to your own life. It seemed an impossible choice, and when I woke with a start, mid-leap, I was grateful not to have had to make the decision.

But the dream stuck with me all day. Of missed trains rushing into invisible distances, of indecisiveness and knowing which path to choose. There was something in the dream about you, too, and maybe, if I were to be completely honest, that's the reason any of it stuck at all.

Maybe you're the thing I'm running after, even long after the game has been lost. And even waking won't still the storm in my chest.