There are things I see in my dreams that are signs, signs of what is to come, maybe not in the immediate future, but when I am old, in my next birth even.

I have dreamt of places that I have never been to, remembering the smallest, seemingly inconsequential details; the cerulean blue of a peak-summer sky, the same blue reflected in ice cold water, mountains, mountains everywhere standing tall and proud, and a silence peculiar to dreams where even your thoughts begin to whisper quietly to themselves.

The next morning, I woke up with a name on my lips of a sacred lake in Tibet.

I wonder if I will ever see this lake in this lifetime. I wonder if I used to live by this lake in another body, in another time. What stories does my soul carry of this maybe-life?

In this way, through fragments of visions, and scraps of memory that visit us in between planes of consciousness, our dreams remind us of how we are story-bearers. They nudge us, and say, remember, you are so much more than what you think yourself to be.

***

A recent memory, of sitting in a 200-year old palace on a brutally hot day, watching a flutist play a hauntingly familiar tune. He sat on a threadbare carpet, glittering air surrounding him as he released note after pure note into the space around him.

If I closed my eyes and listened hard enough, I could hear the precise moment my ears received the sound, the sound traveling through my blood, into my heart, a frisson of pleasure then released back through my body, and finally, the softening of muscles that were finally letting go.

That afternoon, listening to the flutist in a city I must have lived in a life now gone, I was filled with longing. The same longing that fills me as I recount this chapter of this story to you, of a woman sitting in a palace, moved to tears by music that her soul recognized.

This is also the longing that visits at 3 am on a full moon night where you ache to hear the voice of your lover, but he is nowhere to be found.

***

In my dream, I was standing by a large glass window. Before me, a vast ocean for as far as my eyes can see. A teal blue, mixed with white, crashing waves frothing as they meet the rocks that are somewhere far below me. As I stare into the sky (and I cannot remember the colour of this sky, as sometimes dreams are wont to do), a flock of seagulls appear, flying in a beautiful formation, flying faster and faster towards me.

The logical part of my dream self cries out in worry that they may crash into the glass, but as they appear before me, they appear to be smiling. They enter me, and I awake.

It is the first time in days that I have slept. I cannot remember if this dream is a memory, or not.

…

Arathi Devandran curates personal experiences, snapshots of the world and the stories people are willing to share with her through prose and poetry www.miffalicious.com