Rosemary Nissen-Wade #25: Forewarning

Forewarning

In the dream

I was trying and trying

to call out to you,

I was desperate.

Some force, 

some inexorable fate,

was taking you

further and further away.

In my head I was screaming

your name, but I couldn't

get any sound out, and you

had your back to me,

retreating. You didn't see

my choking struggles,

the despair on my face,

my arm stretching.

Finally I forced out

a stifled gasp, which woke me,

and there you were

lying beside me. 

How many years was that

into our marriage?

Not very long. The kids

were still in primary school.

Even then, I knew

what the dream meant.

When I was in psychotherapy,

the Doc (as we called him

amongst ourselves)

used to ask, when one of the group 

told a frightening dream –

'Who wrote the script?'

But I did get your name out

almost inaudibly. Enough

to wake me, though you stayed asleep.

And of course there was nothing

wrong with my life,

how could there be?

Of course there was nothing wrong

with our marriage.

Some years later,

on another morning,

I woke from a dream 

which I didn't and don't remember – 

only, I brought to consciousness 

the knowledge that I was tied

to an incompatible man

and could not fully be me.

Then a calm voice, not mine,

said inside my head,

'But you won't always be here'.

Immediate peace. 

'Oh, of course not,' I thought.

Later I rationalised: it meant

not here in this moment. We could grow

more together, there was hope.

It took 27 years all told

between our joining and parting.

I still say it was you

who chose to end it.

You insisted it was me.

And perhaps it was –

in a knowing dream, when we 

were still young and blithe.