FUTURE PAST

Once I could see the future.

It was in dreams.

And the dreams were always of houses.

Snippets of color and feeling so intense, they altered my heart and being.

The dreams would embed themselves like faraway embers on a moonless night.� Vague stirrings of warm reds and hypnotic blues, swirling into a smoky mist.� Then black.

�Years later, the visions would return.

Slyly intruding into an otherwise unnotable day.� A moment, an inaudible gasp.��� A small, but profound memory, now seen through open eyes.

Sitting on the floor in front of a giant chiffarobe, legs akimbo and biting my tongue.� Oxblood sandal clutched tightly as I fumble to buckle it.� And there, in the corner, shining in tones of gold and green and auburn, my mother brushing her long, long hair.� White lips. Fiery flecks of static. Black.

Velvet shadows and murmur of whispers.� Rustle of stiff fabrics on clouds of sachet.� Growing thud of fear...then -- a specter of crystal fire, twining depths of red and blue, and shining brighter than diamonds.� Rising ever higher, past tiptoe reach it mocks me. Falling through cool mists of cloying flower scent.

Sun.� Sun pouring in gold buckets on our bed.� Wood creaking, sails sluffling, slow rocking.� A shadow drenches me in coolness then heat as it approaches then covers me.� Water slicked and limned in ice blue, a droplet falling in slow motion from your hair onto our warm kissing mouths.

An old farmhouse showing its bleached ribs in the winter sun.� Out the window, forever fields of yellow grasses waving in the wind.� Oh.....all I can hear is the wind.�

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