Do You Dream?

Do you dream?

Within the warm womb

As your cells divide and your body morphs

Alien to animal, animal to human, human to soul

A chromosomal alphabet soup of Xs and Ys

Do you dream?

So small and befuddling

That we chart your growth with produce of varying sizes

A pea, a grape, a plum, a grapefruit

But you’re more

So much more

Than these layman’s tactile and visual tools  

A rind has nothing on your delicate flesh that will bruise, burn, tear open and quietly mend itself

Cell upon cell upon cell

And what hardened pit can compare to the true core of your being

The essence of all that is holy, glorifying, wondrous, you

Do you dream?

I can’t imagine a world

Accounting for three quarters of a year

That locks you in one place with no escape

An escape

That which dwells just beyond and somewhere within the physical mind

Who do you think upon? 

What secrets do you hold? 

Memories that will be reabsorbed and eventually released

Only as cell after cell after cell decompose

Do you carry with you faint scents, distant music, otherworldly colors?

That will lay dormant until something

Someone draws them out the slightest bit

But the distance will be too great so you brush it off as if it never was

Never will be

But it all has been

It has to have been

Or how could you be?

Do you dream?

E.A. O’Connell