Lego House

I step through the fog. Thick, like the layered contours of deep sleep. Each step leads me through a slower stew of grayness. Shapeless hands whip past me in waves of beaded moisture.
I am walking up a slight hill, known through the body and not the eyes unless against this window of pale breath. Long sinewy calf muscles are hard at work, pulling and tearing in an unusual effort. Dense ligaments have slept behind my thighs, only to awaken in this moment under strain. The past itself is a hazy fog, just blackness speckled with the light of an occasional star and multilevel building. There is a landscape of fuzzy lights, a city covered in smoke. Long, long ago. I move as though this has always been done, only the body screams otherwise. Each step, a pulse. Each step, traveled and regressed. Surrounded by white, forward seems to be back, only the incline reveals another truth. One moment after another, then another. Another step into the thickness of gray, into the clouds which cover me as though I was them. As though I was nothing but a movement of moisture and white mixing with gray and converging with water. Change is upon me with the stirring of a lavender scented mist. The clouds swirl as though in a last dance with time, peaking like ocean waves that have met the might of a great titan, and then recede. Each step takes me further from them. I watch as they swirl, trapped in a barrier they cannot cross.
The night opens like a flower. Black. I have nearly reached the crest of the hill, the mound which may be a smooth mountain. Ahead of me, at the peak of the hill is a multi-colored house. Almost square but for the small rectangular shaped tower on the right side. I run to it. I run as if it breathes. I run to my old friend. I run to the house. There are no lights, but we are illuminated by a yellow light that comes from no sun, no stars. An eerie yellow light that casts shadows on the grass that move with the shape of elephants and tigers. I run to the house, to a memory, to the self that I have left. My fingers caress the walls, the thick plastic bricks that protect the house from the night and the night from the whispers of those who dwell there. My body twirls with joy, with a memory that I can not recall and yet I look for.
The house grows as I open my eyes to its form, the life-size Lego house. I run around the periphery. There are four feet of solid yellow bricks that touch the grass and above is an explosion of color. From four feet to the flat roof is a mixture of red, blue and green bricks with an occasional yellow acting like a star. I touch the smooth walls as though it was a lover’s chest. Each side of the house has three small square windows. No glass or shade, just a portal in and out. Under the center window of each side is a bush of fresh lavender. I reach out to one and pull from a reluctant stem. “Thank you,” I say as I crush a purple cone between my fingers and bring it to my nose.
The tall tower, slightly larger than a chimney, is formed from solid green plastic bricks. At the top, a hard plastic flag stands. It’s shape invokes the memory of a proud flag flapping in the wind, crying for freedom. This flag is forever frozen in the ripple, a snapshot to a moment that existed with other material in another place. Beside the open rectangular door is a little plastic tree. It stands still though the night is alive with the dance of the wind.
The gap of the door calls me to enter. I step in. There are no lights. No sounds but the wind slamming against the plastic walls.