Variations on Dreaming: A Lyric Meditation

Sleep is not the opposite of waking. It is waking's memory — the version of consciousness that refuses to forget what the day has discarded. I dream in two languages. In Shona, the dreams are older — they belong to my grandmother's house, to the sound of rain on a zinc roof, to the smell of *sadza* cooking in the early evening. In English, the dreams are newer, sharper, more afraid. Between these two dreamscapes is a corridor I cannot quite see. I walk it every night. Some mornings I wake with dust on my feet. What does it mean to remember in sleep? The dream does not distinguish between the living and the dead. My grandfather sits at the table. He has been dead for fifteen years. In the dream, this is not remarkable. In the dream, death is simply another room in the house.