Okay, Once A Week

painting by Todd Horton

I just thought I'd look, when Todd said "You know, there's a pretty cute house for sale just down the road." I just wondered about it. Then I started using possessives, and taking steps, and after the offer was made, and accepted, people asked me where this came from. "Was it a dream of yours?" they said. 

At first, I didn't know what to say to that. I knew they meant, Did you plan this? How did we not know? Where was this, when we saw you in the city? When you wore those shoes, and were never in the kitchen, or at home? Where were we, when this happened in you? 

It's true to say that it was a dream. Not like a goal, though, not an ambition. Really, a dream, something hazy and half-held, the way after a dream, you have the sense of who was in the dream with you, what the place felt like, even if you don't know the names. You know it as a good dream, one you want again, somewhere to linger, or a bad one, something to wake up from. You don't need to know the names. They are self-evident, in dreams. It's only when you wake up that you want to know.

I used the possessive for the mini-farm, but that wasn't adequate, really, saying, my greenhouse, my mini-barn, my bedrooms. There should be a term for mutual possession, for the things you hold, and that hold you in return, for the way we might belong together, the farmhouse owning me as much as I own it. I will be in debt for it, indebted to it. Beholden. The way we are in love.