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Mar 22, 2019, 06:29AM

My Moonsong to Monica

RQ, inspired by a dream, reminisces of true love once lost, then found.

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Another dream, 40 dreams: I woke up in a lather rather sick, tired of being infirm and finally wishing to live. But today it’s raining, so introspection follows. I went back to bed after the bathroom in the early morning. I kept my eyes closed the whole time so that I wouldn’t have trouble falling back asleep. I don’t think I made a mess, but nonetheless, my recollections: a dream. Every night a double feature: for each REM cycle, there’s one dream. A proper night’s sleep includes two separate REM cycles, and two distinct but invariably related dreams. My second dream, a memory: the day I met Monica. Or night. I can’t remember, though I’m still so intoxicated by the dream the details of my biography are slipping away. For now I summon fire and cup lightning in my claws. I remember love.

I heard you say this must be the place. Nonsense, a bunch of gibberish cobbled together by David Byrne to approximate human emotion, a foreign concept to him. We were arguing about Talking Heads, and if Tom Tom Club were better. You insisted “Genius of Love” was the song of the century, and I coughed. “Have you even heard Remain in Light?” No, no, no—my brain’s betraying me. We met years before Byrne formed his stupid band. Before electricity, before the superstorms. I remember the rain, and the mud we slipped in, but no screens. No ruckus or cacophonous streets covered in soot and plastic. The apartment on W. 54th St… the boarding house in Monterey… the stables in Wyoming, the horses we met, the friends we made... So, so many years ago. So, so pretty… I heard you say “so...”

But I had nothing to say, so I said nothing. “So…” lingering outside the tabernacle. I don’t remember time between “So…” and the linens, undoing the laces. I save what I can for my heart, but in my mind I’m everyone, and so it was written: twin stars, moving conjoined over night on earth forever and ever. We’re the spectral angels; we’re a constellation. Bennington never had this. He was never lucky in love. “I suppose it’s hard to date someone with a lot of opinions,” he’d say. Well, sure. Your opinions, maybe (he wants to raise the death tax, for example. How obscene). But Monica and I have never been star-crossed or unrequited: no, we were born readymade, soulmates at first sight. I hope I see her today. I hope she comes back. I know not where she wanders now, but I feel my heart tugging toward the sky, and in my dreams I see her as we met, the way we were: a perfect match, completely in love.

I read her letter in the attic and wept, my tears upon the fading ink. When will my one true love come back home? When can I come to her? Why can’t I see life but through a glass darkly? Questions with no answers… I’ll take a rainy day walk through the woods to clear my head, and look for our heart, carved out for keeps in an old oak tree. I’ll see you on the other side.

—Follow Rooster Quibbits on Twitter: @RoosterQuibbits

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