Lucid

Luminous, bright, easy to understand. Incongruous words to describe dreams of tidal waves that crash in my mind night after night. Sometimes I'm the survivor who shouldn't have been, and the ocean wells up once more from sculpted rock to reclaim me. Sometimes we're in a building and I race to safety. Each time, water lingers in my lungs when I wake, cold clings to fingers and toes like second skin.

Luminous. The light that filters through a wall of water is anything but. Why the dreams return is a mystery. Yes, I'm aware it's just a dream, not a nightmare, and I can control what I do. But if having control of one's actions were the only requisite for understanding, how do we explain the millions of stupid things supposedly awake, lucid people do each day?

I wish there were a better word for these dreams. One I could remember and use, preferably before coffee, when my family asks why I woke up the way I did. And I wish there were bright answers to the question that drip-drips in the back of my mind all day: If I let the water take me there, what will I wake to here?