in a gasp of air

By Lucia Llano

stage i. sleepwalk 

I spent that summer sleepwalking, with my hands fluttering in slumber, with imprints of bedsheets on my hot skin. I had fresh eyes. 

With every July dawn, I woke up with the fullness of my life in my hands. My palms were stained green with it. I lived slowly and took pleasure. 

In a little town on the French-Spanish border, I watch as my long legs slowly unravel under the crystallized cold water of secluded coves. Like traversing through honey, I softly wade, navigating the warm embrace of the mountains, my body indistinguishable from the sunbeams glistening on the surface. It is just the world and I, just the muted sounds of songbirds and the gurgle of my breath and laughter upon breaking the surface. As the night falls, there are no other lights to illuminate the world, save for the soft, yellow glow of bedroom window nightlights, radiating sleep. The mountains swaddle up the village in black. Lying on the rocks in front of Salvador Dali’s summer home, watching the sailboats shiver in the night breeze, I keep waiting to wake up. I close my eyes only to open them to meet those of a wild boar chasing me out of the harbor. 

Another sunrise and this time I find myself sitting under a singular mossy tree on a mountaintop in the Pyrenees, peeling oranges during an unanticipated hail storm, when I stumble upon the carcass of a calf. Auburn, curly fur, skeleton. It seemed to me, she had come here one morning by the running river and the coming storm to lie down, all peaceful, and eat some wildflowers before passing on, giving in to sleep. Now, her belly bloated and full, bursting with ribs and little worms, hooves kicked up and rested. I looked at her and for the first time in my life thought, that’s not such a bad way to go. Then my body, remembering itself still so full of life and blood, jumped into the mountain river, so cold and delicious it made my limbs cramp up with awakeness. 

The sun wavers in the sky, rising and setting, hesitant and indecisive and beautiful over the hills and I now open my eyes to find my bare body submerged in a Spanish island’s dark turquoise waters, encompassed by the rough cliff faces the locals deemed the fingers of God. My skin, softly lit by a blood moon, ripples with each movement, melding with the sea. I look over my shoulder to the coastline where people sing and twirl, kicking up sand, to the hypnotic melody of a man strumming a guitar. They welcome me in and I dance in circles with salt-kissed strangers, looking up at a swirling star-spattered sky. It’s all so beautiful that the only way I can make sense of it is that I’m dreaming. And for the time being, I’m glad for it. I just wade softly through the dream. 

I spent every day that summer watching the sun glisten over the forest mountain range. I was afraid to wake up one morning to the same Sierra Nevada and see instead a view I had accustomed to– unremarkable. 

I hope I never get used to any of this. 

stage ii. anamnesis 

When August came, so did the comedown. I left the sheath of my dream-skin in the Mediterranean and got on a plane to Austin, TX. I thought the long fingers of the Iberian Peninsula and its red heat would trace me all the way back home. But they let go. Like waking up from a dream just to watch it circle down the drain in my morning shower, I fell cold back into the reality of old things. I still had the same hands that had held life so new, the same legs that had waded in iced mountain creeks, the same bright eyes. I still had inside me all the goodness of life, but I couldn’t quite reach in and touch it. 

After months of sleepwalking, my soft body found itself slammed back into the brick wall of normality. The thing is, the longer you spend in a wonderful place, the quicker it’ll lose its wonder. And I had lived here my whole life. I had left that strangely planet behind and was back on my home grounds— and I knew how it worked here. 

On this side of the wall, I compliantly played it cool and collected. I knew to follow the dotted lines between different university buildings, to do it straight-faced and not digress off the path. To dig for things to criticize and run on the fumes of efficiency. And when I spoke to others, I’d be careful not to not to open my eyes too wide and to keep it easy & breezy by complaining about my sleep last night, midterms, and the weather. I wondered if anyone else’s bones were as cold as mine with loneliness, or if I was the weird one. 

But the remnants of the dream I had once had were stubborn. And sometimes a stray would bubble up from behind the apathy and I could feel an inkling of what lied beyond the brick wall. I could almost peer over, reach out and graze the sweet strangeness. Each time I sat, dumbfounded, reminded of the obvious. Of all things, how had I misplaced life? 

I started pulling at the loose threads of living until it all unraveled beneath me and I fell through. Just like a dream, my life was an ephemeral experience, a succession of flashing senses. What I knew as the so-called real world was simply my mind interpreting an ambiguous, erratically organic world into something sensible; a predictable machine in place of an everflowing animal, because life is easier to understand when tamed. But beyond the projection of my consciousness, a true, objective reality never existed. In other words, this world was clay in my hands. While at first, this felt like stepping into strange and delusional shoes too small for me, reverting back to a childlike wonder I should have grown out of by now, I quickly realized that in the grand scheme of things, it was never as serious as I had made it out to be, but rather, it was a nonsensical lucid dream. There was space within the world for play, for curiosity, for connection, and for magic. 

Still, I find myself forgetting just as suddenly as I remember. But each time I remember, life tastes even sweeter. I take joy in flickering between this duality. I spend my time traveling to and from the dream realm, wavering on the wall between sleep and awake. I leave my dream-skin hanging off of my coat hanger, and when I’m done playing the serious part, I dash out and dive into the springs of wonder. I know that strange world is always there, waiting for me to notice it. And the wonder comes often and stays long. 

stage iii. !!! 

Now, I savor the delicious absurdity of life and don’t feel ashamed when I wake up with it, messy, smeared on the palm of my hands. I live life in a gasp of air. The mundanity of my day-to-day life melds in with a bizarre world. 

I do my readings for class with my skin submerged in hot grass and get distracted. I have never felt the world around me so alive. The air so sweet like water to gulp. I can’t keep myself from gasping for it. And the wet grass like the fur of Earth– a giant animal, and me, a little flea. 

Later, in a hurry, I glance up at the sharp, drooping limbs of a burly oak, like gray pale bodies nodding in sleep, and see two bluejays sitting around a twig-nest, chirping lullabies to their chicks, utterly unaware of me. I looked up, by coincidence, in passing, and peered straight into a home. I go to class with bird-sound and birch tangled in my hair.

On my way home, with my head out the car window, and the wind grabbing fistfuls of my hair, I catch a glimpse of my teeth in the rearview mirror. 

The world is so pretty and I’m easy to please. My best friend. A cold creek. My love. I’m so glad that it’s one of those days. My hands at heart-center, alive. 

I’m getting better at this. 

stage iv. awake 

You stand by a flowing river. You watch the water ebb and flow, crystallize. The universe allows you to step in. Slowly, dipping your toes. 

The universe says: Here is life. You can borrow it. You can’t stay forever. I’ll come get you soon. Could be only a minute, could be an hour, could be the whole day. 

You don’t waste a second without enjoyment. Your bones jump into the cold ichor of life. You lick the plate of time clean. 

And when you wake up, you exist — in a world so strange & wonderful.