Masumi's
Dream
Mr
Masumi had a dream
In
his dream he was sleeping
Through
a faintly opened window
a
dimmed light penetrated the
inside,
somehow
humming
a note of silence
On
his walls, a maelstrom
of
ants, moths, centipedes -
some
were walking in lines
other
just standing
still
as
if happy
with
that –
obscured
the meaning of life
outside
the
dream
Mr
Masumi told us, then, that
was
everything
he
remembered from the
dream
Until
yesterday
Mr
Masumi visited me at
work.
He held a gracious look
in
his eyes an intense
juvenile
luster
A
few days before, he
had
been blessed with a few
more
inches of the film
he
dreamed. At first, he was afraid
all
that insect paraphernalia
would
have killed him
in
his sleep or maybe left him
bleeding
over
his
white linen; but no -
at
this point, he took another sip
of
his black coffee and I
couldn't
help noticing how surreal
it
suddenly got:
no
longer at my office
instead,
there was a round table, outside
just
near a road, but no traffic
the
landscape resembled something familiar
dry,
arid, with angular objects
fitting
across the fields as
beasts
waiting for the
prey
I
had a wine glass filled with coffee, too
It
was a pleasurable afternoon -
amazingly
– he went on -
all
the ants
formed
lines, so consistently moving
in
their trails
movement,
slowly, got erased from perception
and
then one ant fell to floor -
he
made a painful gesture
and
a clashing sound -
then
the second ant, the third
they
were falling as if the dream
for
them
had
come to an end
This
scenario went on for a while
I
was scared as hell, though
my
other I, the one sleeping in
the
dream, looked like
an
angel
I
wanted to get closer to
my
self
and
feel how it feels
even
if just in a
dream
but
the ants kept falling
and
walking
and
on the walls, now
it
was clear
words
were being shaped
in
the gaps
ants
left
There
was no time
to
ask him the obvious question
In
this exotic story, not even
Masumi's
shadow was real
I
finished my coffee, which by now
tasted
as wine and
moved
back into office
Above
my desk, two
clocks
displayed time
fighting
for attention with
a
sense of humor
However
it was a folded
paper
stuck
into my keyboard
I
grabbed and opened
first
The
message, balancing
before
my eyes
-
as a phantom -
Keep
dreaming
Signed,
Masumi.
©
2015, José Eduardo Coelho
