Vince in Frankfurt, KY #70 (Dreams)

I joined an Antiochan Orthodox Church near my home some weeks back because I had begun to feel alone with my love for God and that feeling of being so intimately fused was almost too heavy a burden to bear. I sat through the liturgy, felt quite welcomed by the congregation but somewhere inside I felt this barren, broken feeling when I was in the Cathedral. A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was struggling up a craggy hill with thousands of other people who were cloaked in an otherwordly silence. When I finally managed to climb to the top, all I could see in the distance were many more treacherous hills with many more thousands of people climbing them. I woke up and sat on the edge of the bed; thought about hurling myself out of the window. I wondered if my longing for joy and unity wasn't a sterile, false bond put in place to try and make man feel less alone and if maybe God and vitality could only be found in solitude and sorrow?

Elizabeth in Ogden, Utah #58 (Dreams)

I have a recurring dream where I'm sitting on the hood of a 94 Dodge Shadow that is driving down the highway at a dangerous speed weaving in and out of traffic. My legs are spread and I'm topless. With one hand I'm squeezing my nipple and with the other I'm fingering myself. When I try to look back and see who's driving the car, I always wake up.

Andrea in Lawrence, Kansas #33 (Dreams)

I saw my mom in a dream last night. I dreamt that doctors could bring somebody back to life for a few minutes and me and my husband decided to do that for mom because I really longed to talk to her again. They unearthed her from this great tomb where the doctors told me that everyone in the world was now buried. They sat her in this metal chair and she sat there quiet and grave. I asked her if she could see us and she said no, she couldn't see us. I kept trying to ask her questions about the other world and she'd give me brief, vague answers. She didn't seem too interested in talking with me but was really excited to talk with my husband. Finally, I said "mom, it's time to go back" and she said she was ready and happy to be going back. I woke up and felt more grief than I had ever known was possible.

Otis in Rome, Georgia #31 (Dreams)

I had a dream about you last night. You were laying on a bed in the middle of the woods at night. Encircling the bed was a fire that never dwindled or grew larger. I could see you off in the distance and struggled through the briars and foliage until I reached the edge of the fire. You called to me from the midst of those flames and told me that this kind of fire won't burn me and I crossed the threshold of the blaze. I found you so full of longing and tenderness, nude with your legs arched. I crawled into bed and we coupled. After we finished I took your hand and told you I was gonna take you from this lonesome forest and you shook your head and answered that you couldn't leave because this was your homeland and the world that doesn't end. I put my head in my hands and softly wept. I woke up crying like that. (Pony Bones)

Stuart in Augusta, Georgia #1 (Dreams)

Had a dream last night that I was back in my grandfather's old house. I was asleep in the bed in the basement and my grandmother who died 6 years back slowly descended the stairs with a vase that didn't have anything in it. I tried to speak to her as she approached but I couldn't produce anything other than these paine, moaning sounds and I realized that these sorrowful calls were my grief over her death. She laid down in bed next to me and touched my face and I started crying softly. Overwhelmed with my loss, I leapt out of bed, opened the sliding glass door and ran out into the muggy summer night until I reached the banks of the creek that bordered their land. First light was breaking through the night sky and about a hundred yards East there were 3 dogs tearing viciously at a dead body that looked a little like our neighbor. I jumped in that creek and never came back up for air. (Microwave Windows)

Arch Deacon

Even when man is asleep there's dogs howling in the night, so a wicked, restless spirit finds voice. I'm awake when they cry out and I recognize my own. I dreamed last night that wasps was crawling on my heart and my heart was laying on an old wooden table. There was me, Ted, Shel and Horseshoe out by Blackfoot Lake and I was daring em' to stare in the water and see what kind of sumbitches they were. Night was coming and I could feel that darkness in my heart. Horseshoe is staring into the lake. I pick up a big rock from the shore and smash him over the head with it. Ted and Shel act like they was birthed for murdering; I could smell blood on their breath, even past the smell of Bourbon and the atrocity that reeked of rotting apples being devoured by starving mouths. They held Horseshoe's head under that freezing, dark Kentucky lake until his frantic legs stopped kicking. I felt like cutting his spine out of his back cause I'd never seen one and never held one in my hands. Instead I walked his heavy body into the lake like he was being baptized and watched it sink slow like it was holding on to this world. I told Ted and Shel to get on home and waited on the shore for God to come down from Heaven and punish me. I saw him in the half light of early morning before the moon hid behind a cloud. He looked at me cross and then walked off into the forest. There I was on the shore all alone with no God to hurt me like I wanted to be hurt.