My dreams are often visited by ragged fragments of past experience that rise out of the distant mist to haunt me. Dreams hardly ever reach for an unrecognized or desired future. They mostly haunt me out of moldy graves of my past. They will not be forgotten, but remind me that they are a disjointed part of me that lingers just below the surface of my counciousness.
These haunts are fabricated out of memory parts that hover nearby and come out at night or during daytime naps. They roam in my imagination, pressing against the windows of my awareness. They leave emotional smears across my waking mind, reminding me that they have been present. And they are sure to return.
I wish that these fragments from my memories were more often pleasant or comforting. These haunts mostly recall unresolved moments of time that were uncomfortable. They come from places I would rather not revisit. They remind me of bits of experience that were difficult or challenging. I suspect they are moments that I have ever fully embraced as my own, and so they return to lurk and linger at the edges of my awareness.
My dreams are populated by these haunting guests who insist on ringing my door bell. They suddenly appear, uninvited, sitting on my living room couch and refuse to leave. If I wake, I am certain they will still be present if I allow myself to settle back into dreaming. There seems to be no way to get them to leave, except I become absorbed in my awake present. Even then, they are capable of leaving behind the emotional imprints of their presence.
If I return to sleep, they will take the occasion to return and appear as real as my hand before my eyes. They often leave an emotional imprint that reminds me for long moments, sometimes hours, that the haunt has been present and stirred my awareness.
These are the haunts that rise out of the moldy, musty detritus of my past. I wish that I were visited more often by a glowing fairy, bright with the promise of a relaxed mind when I wake. More often my haunts are a hairy man, a gnome that rises out of the decaying residue of a troubled time.