It's never too late.

And I mean flushed in the non-bathroom sort of way

Weighing my pockets with stones of longing

Especially when those days are Saturday and Sunday.

They always come crawling back

We live in an old house out in the country. We have a big family. It�s a beautiful summer day, pleasant, idyllic even. I look out the window, and there is a strong black tornado winding its way toward the house. Suddenly everything is gusty and chaotic. I yell �Tornado!� and start shepherding everyone into the basement. As the tornado is getting nearer, I can feel the pull of its vacuum force through all of the windows and doors in the house, which have no covering. I turn back, and my Dad is still in the living room, so I grab his hand, Mom grabs mine from behind, and we pull him down to safety. My cat is lost in his favor, however, but surprisingly I am not too upset. Looking up into the living room, I see Theo is just walking in the door; his face is so vivid, his expression wide-eyed. I leap up, trying to holler over the roar of the wind, reach out for him, and I can see his hand reaching out for me, but it�s too late. I�m pulled back down to my family as he�s swept away, and the storm is upon us. The crawlspace seems secure, and we wait out the worst of it there.

When it�s over, I crawl out of the window onto piles and piles of rubble, splintered houses, timber... I'm the only one left. I have to maneuver my way down about two stories worth before I�m on the ground. At my feet I find the few objects I had thrown into my pockets before hiding in the shelter: my antique watch, a few trinkets. The watch is the only thing I recognize, thinking back on it, and it�s very uncharacteristic for me to have a dream like this without being desperate to find all of my stuff�--particularly things inherited from my grandparents. Usually I spend the first panicked minutes running around the house, shoving piles of jewelry and photos into whatever bags I can find. But I guess this dream didn�t give me much time. As I�m salvaging the few tiny things that survived (they all fit easily into one pocket), Zoe comes along with a bulldozer and exclaims, �Allison! Where have you been all year?� as if perhaps I have traveled through time.

Next scene I�m at some kind of a group meeting... (There was an interlude with four-wheelers and walkie-talkies and crossing the street with my mom and cousin and some weird PBS sex-ed video, but I�ll happily sacrifice the details from that one. The characters in the group meeting were cross-overs, to some extent, from the end of that segue.) There are about four people. We�re in a small room with a couch; most of the decoration is beige-toned. We go down the hall to a bigger meeting room, which reminds me of the Teenline room, mostly because of the big orange couch. An appropriate environment for the �counseling� tone of this dream.

I have a book with me. I open it to a particular page and start reading�It�s an account of a tornado scene, just like what I experienced earlier. This seems to indicate that this was something from my past. I start getting teary-eyed, close the book, and the group asks me to tell my story. We start discussing it. A teacher/group leader figure walks in in medias res, carrying another copy of the book. I have the impression that he is late because he was eavesdropping and decided to change our topic for the day to this book. So he sits down where the first phone station would have been were this actually the Teenline room, opens the book to a different page and asks me to read aloud. I open my own copy, and the words are scrawled in heavy, smudged pencil, large letters forming barely legible French phrases. My eyes won�t focus on them, and I can�t read without stuttering and messing up the pronunciation. It�s impossible.

This section in particular seems very clear to me, but I�m not going to burden my text with an analysis. Suffice it to say that it is an accurate reflection, and everything thus far is neatly tied together.

I�m no longer sure of the order of events at the very end of our meeting. At some point while the group was filing out of the room at the end of the meeting, someone held out their hand to me. It�s blurry since I�ve been almost crying, but it looks like he�s holding out coins to me. I go to take his hand to help me up, but he says, �Do you need a job?� like all I�m concerned about having lost everything in the tornado is money. I look at him bouche b�e for a second, then mimic his question with no small amount of incredulity. The next moment may have happened earlier, since the group is now seated and attentive again. But it only lasts long enough for me to say, �You just want that person back. You don�t know what it�s like to watch them disappear.�

I keep seeing lightning, but it�s February, and no one else sees it. at 9:38 a.m.