ships that sail..

My heart skips, then pounds.  I bat around my bed, sheets, blankets... phone.  It's only 5 am.  Go back to sleep.

I dream about a cafe, somewhere.  Somewhere else.

I check the phone again.  It's 6:27.

Sleep won't come to my right side, or my left.  I try my stomach.  I don't try my back.  It hurts too much to lie on my back.

Doctors visit at 11:45.  Could it be earlier?  Should I call and see?

I say a short prayer.  Something about being grateful.  My body aches, and I can't stay still any longer.

I get up and wander aimlessly.  I turn on the espresso machine, but I don't make espresso.  I take seven minutes to find my journal, but I don't write in my journal.  I stand at the mirror for a very long time.  

I can't even begin to imagine what the doctor could possibly tell me.  I don't trust doctors, generally, but I kind of like the one I've got now.  He's just always so damn rushed.

There is a woman in this mirror here.  I am certainly not seventeen anymore.  I  work hard and manage things, like my calendar and my budget and my weight and my alcohol consumption.  I've birthed dreams and I've buried dreams, and I will myself to dream some more.

Shortly after we broke up, my very close friend and now ex-boyfriend told me that his experience of his late twenties (Saturn returning) was "a lot like standing at a dock where all the boats are leaving."

Maybe I'm afraid of ships.  Maybe I've jumped from too many burning, sinking ships.  Maybe I imagined that my whole life would be on ships that then broke and burned and settled in splintered pieces into their dark watery graves.  Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself for delaying this whole ship-picking business.  Maybe I'm weary of that wild, uncaring sea.

I've already started to put money away for travelling.  I don't even know where I'm going yet.  I dream of Greece, Caracas, India, Prague, Rome.  I dream of siestas after large meals in small towns, and hiking to picnic lunches on Irish bluffs.  Old monasteries, broken empires, ghost hallowed fortresses, vibrant barrios.  I want to be a quiet stranger in the marketplace,  I want to see the "angels in the architecture".  Passionate people, simple-living people, socialites and monks...  People and places to blow on the embers of this fiery woman, subdued by heart break and cold fear.  

There's not much use in thinking about what I'll do if the doctor says this or the doctor says that.  I'm still thinking about it anyway. 

Another prayer.  I can still be grateful.  Infinite ships minus one or two ships still equals infinite ships.