Red Curtains

My most intricate dreams I rarely write about. The details haunt me for weeks and sometimes months at a time because those complicated stories are difficult to start writing about. Last night, I had one.

The war theme continues and wears me down... My boyfriend Anthony and I are in Iraq in a town where the homes and shops are carved into hard boring dirt. Doors and windows are wide open and the smell of heavily spiced meats and rice cooking permeates the air. People speak in foreign tongues, whilst Anthony and I stand together holding hands locked together in otherness. I am wearing shorts and a tank top because is it hot. The government hates women like me. They want me to cover up and pretend I can't read. They don't want me to read the signs of the times. They want me to be easy to catch. Again, I am hunted. The difference is I am not the only one - Anthony is a sitting duck, too.

We run together. We hide behind homes on jagged rocks and map out every escape. We bicker, we hug, we kiss and we cry, but mostly we run. Irritation starts to burn inside me because I start to remember what we promised to one another before the chase began, before I could hear bullets pummeling aluminum siding with my name on them and before my right to be a strong independent woman came into question.

Anthony had proposed to me. He had gotten down on one knee and slid a ring on my finger. He had said that cliched remark, "I want to spend the rest of my life with you". No truer words could have been said to explain our present predicament. We were running for our lives. We were thristy and hungry and not knowing who, outside each other, we could trust.

We eventually found ourselves in an extravagant bridle shop. The floors rolled like the ocean and white curtains hung like streamers and heavily make-uped women floated over to me like they had been waiting just for me. They were. My dress was ready. The ladies softly pushed me into a room ringing with flourescent lights. I tried to leave knowing that the longer I stayed the greater the chance that the military would find me and cut me in half. Anthony wrung his hands and his eyebrows became worry signs.

My irritation grew into rage over this perfectly timed injustice. My future was a marriage to war, to shackles and to blood-letting. I was too angry to cry tears of sadness. My desire to get married and live a peaceful life with the man that I love was destroyed by old beliefs.

The inferno burned inside me until the last thing I saw was red splattered all over the curtains.