Literati!
The multi-talented Ed Coonce visits the nether-world where humor and meloncholy come to some kind of agreement. I recall the words of a friend that still linger a half a century later: “Americans…we’re the only ones who continue to believe that love will be less painful than life’s other experiences.”
Please help us gain momentum and build our writers’ community by leaving a comment on this and all other stories as they are posted, and by all means, compose an entry of your own. What if you were given a second chance at first love?
Here is
Where Do You Go When You Dream?
by Ed Coonce
I sit next to a shining sphere, larger than me…it contains paragons of virtue, such as “If it ain’t broke, then you won’t need to use your 30-day money-back guarantee.”
I don’t believe anything.
Gathered around me is a crowd with smirking faces, waiting for a good joke or something. They don’t get it, they have paid good money, but the weather pulls a Woodstock.
A face of rain sheets and shoots into the sphere, it comes apart, sprinkling soundless shards, burying me and my pain. I am not immune to agony, I have lived with it and and its brother sermons for all my lifetime.
Where do you go when you dream?
Is it the Parisian villa with hot bread on every corner? That’s not the hellhole of me taking that fatal shot over and over.
Maybe it’s the heaven of finding her…the one. And the emptiness that comes when you know hearts get locked up and distant?
Where do you go when you dream?
Have you ever ridden that brown mare along the 2-lane blacktop, waving at the other kids on the school bus? Perhaps I dream of Marion and our instant grade school hearts, wondering “what became of us?” Sometimes… with that sphere pulsing in time with my heart, I expect the phone to ring. I will answer, and it will be Marion. I will offer her a stick of gum, something forbidden to fifth graders, she will like it, we will once again sit close together on the gym bleachers after school and dream together of maples turning orange in the fall winds.
Where do you go when you dream?
Ed Coonce, 2025
I like the imagery of the simple love offering, a stick of gum, and the maples turning orange at end. And the future tense in that scene gives it a sense of certainty …this will happen, in your dreams at least. The world could do well with more innocence like this, old fashioned love and commitment from the start. A sweet story!
Didn’t mean to end my comment there. This piece is more than the sweet dreams at the end. The complex feelings at the start, the tease of secrets almost shared, the shades of grey are intriguing. Life can’t be tied up with a bow, but we can all dream.
There is nothing quite like the first childhood love. Where did that girl go; the one you wrote poems to in third grade—with new, uncertain cursive? Where is that boy that gave your first kiss—albeit on the cheek (no, that’s not art imitating life. Nobody’s life. Stop asking if it’s mine)? Maybe we’ve bumped into them in our dreams as teens and adults. Would we recognize them?
Oh, I missed reading your stuff, Calabacita!
Hello Ed. It’s been awhile…
So happy to read your work again.
May we all continue to be dreamers of our own lives.
Really love the question at the end towards the beloved, “Where do you go when you dream?” It really adds to the sense of longing. The speaker has this wonderful memory of a beloved, and cherishes it, but they also don’t know if the other person returns to the same memory. Really great.