sometimes i wake exhausted, all my energy drained by the ferocity of my dreams. they take rough switchback trails, premeditate, foreshadow, make strange self-referential symbolisms. steeped in fullsaturation, all the senses engaged. i taste, smell, breathe, feel weight and darkness, all the colors, all the emotions, everything. the alarm startles me, most mornings, a crashing of reality like borges' sorcerer in the fire.

i don't remember them, mostly.
no. that isn't true. if i write them down, even the merest sketch of a plotline, i will remember them for years. if i speak them outloud, flickered images will haunt me for days. sometimes, they leap fullfledged into my mind in the middle of the day, stark, brilliant detail that shatters the complacency of lunch or the sunset.

i try not to remember. i make deliberate efforts to forget them, to erase the terrible beauty of these other lives that threaten to reduce my waking moments to only a necessary evil, a time in between to rest.