The first time I dreamed blue heron was not after kissing the girl who was not my girlfriend. It wasn’t after we stripped off the sheets, leaving muddy footprints on the bare mattress. It wasn’t the morning I stumbled the howmany blocks home, my forehead still ringing from the linoleum of a friend’s shower, where I tried so hard to knock some sense into me. How she held me. How pinned half-naked against the wall in our hallway, my mouth said goodbye without a single word. How kissing an open wound hurts, all that hot and red grief.
Honestly, I don’t remember the first blue heron dream. Just waking up to purple gray peace, letting that stillness seep in and obscure my everything.
How to explain magic. How it finds us. How we create it, and does it really make a difference in the end? What I know is blue heron. Something that bridges land, and water, and sky. Something that appears in my dreams or waking life when I know I’m on the right track. A week ago, so much heavy crowding at the back of my throat I thought I’d never leave and the city is no place for a wading bird, but I still heard the universe speaking loud and clear. Sometimes dreams are not enough. We need something tangible, and I didn’t touch the license plate to make sure it was real, but I still feel it vibrating like the laugh it dragged out of me. Even unwillingly. So tongue in cheek, the ways destiny speaks to us sometimes. How to explain magic, how it finds us.
How we create it. A blackberry bramble biting at my ankles, or a back alley apparition. Something out of nothing, and does it really make a difference, if we both make it home safe?
This is all to say that on Monday I found out my friend died. Or no, that’s not quite right. He took his own life. And there’s no way to talk about suicide that feels ‘quite right’, except he got tired. Except we are all so tired, sometimes. Except it somehow illuminates the paths we choose not to take every day. This grief so confusing, all hot and red. Like one minute I’m driving, wondering about endings, but the next I’m sitting in a booth at the bar where the future seems obscure. Past and present colliding and I can’t explain this heaviness, except Can you believe it’s August and fucking raining? Except how can you believe in anything? The blue heron dream. Magic, how I can sit here and laugh over burgers and drinks. Create this community, built around imaginary monsters and real ghosts.
In all the social media posts he is smiling; how heavy that must have been.
It has to make a difference, in the end. The ways we hold space. You were a safe space for so many, and I’m sorry the world couldn’t have been better. I’m sorry it couldn’t hold you better, make you feel more beautiful. Make you understand your magic. How it could find you. How you create it. I want you to know you were loved. I want you to know how many lives you touched.
The rest of us have to keep going, trusting we're on the right track, but I hope you rest easy, friend.
-b
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