Angel

In the dream, I am lurching homewards through the city late at night, and I am sloppy drunk. It is not a real inebriation, because in the way of dreams I am lucid and spectating as though trapped in my shambling body. I am unable to place my feet correctly, unable to force my eyes to keep focus. I know that I'm drunk, but I cannot remember how. The other night owls give me a wide berth and they turn to watch me wobble along. I want to tell them that I'm sober, that I'm fine. But all that comes from my raw lips is mush and drivel. I look a mess. I must have vomited because the taste is in my mouth and my shirt is soaked and foul. I feel like a zombie.

I stagger into an alley and have to pause at dumpster to heave onto the ground. I cannot make sense of what comes out. I don't remember dinner. In the mess I can see pale, oddly blue specks that look like they might be undissolved pills. It is damp and chilly out but I am sweating with fever. My throat is raw from stomach acid.

I look up to see a radiant figure, male, nude, hairless and glowing magenta. His arms taper to neat amputations at the wrists. From where his eyes should be reach the hands of a child. The fingers are clasped across his face in a way that looks like a mask, but also reminds me of my grandmother, sitting on her fading couch, clasping her fingers in her lap while looking out the window. Looking away through windows when she spoke of my father, the soldier and the hero. Her hands touching each other lightly, fingers interlacing. She spoke in reverent tones, "He was such a good boy. My little man. You look just like him." This figure hovers a foot in the air with arms out like Jesus, and he waits for me to swallow my bile.

It is perfectly natural, serene even. That ruddy light burns away the stink and the booze. I can stand up straight though it makes me ache all over, and even that ache begins to face the longer I look at him. The city fades away around us both and he says to me, in strange choral tones, "You are beseiged." The hands unfurl from each other, both pointing to me as clear as any gaze. His breath brings more light and it streams into me, entering my senses intimately. I nod and lick my cracked, raw lips.

"I think I am sick. Can you help me?" My voice trembles. He is beautiful and sincere, I feel no need to resist. His hands come together touching his thumbs to his brow in a gesture of prayer. He bows his head.

"I am simply the message. Will you hear it?" Closer he drifts to me, leaning down to kiss, and those hands that are eyes reach for my face with tingling caresses. I open my lips to draw him in and our teeth clash like sparks and embers. He is warm to the touch and the embrace feels like a longing fulfilled, like prophecy on the eve of revelation, like coming home from a cruel sea.

I cannot find the words - and when it is over he pulls away from me with one hand reaching down to cover his mouth, the other reaching up to clasp his bare brow in spread fingers. Those hands like eyes. My heart pounds; I ache for more of this strange connection, and I reach out and through him.

But he is already receding as a dream within a dream, tilting his head as though in pity. I am left alone in the alley, which even now becomes here, alone in my bed. I awake to sirens.