by LJ Frank

Walking on path in a late autumn forest with leaves underfoot our conversation veered towards dreams and things that existed in our respective lives.

What was the thought that slipped into your head in the middle of the night? She asked.

A page of words. On the one hand it was profound and nimble, yet I lost it in the morning light and then an agony seeped into my blood. Was it a corrupted synapse in the brain or merely a grasping for a missing key on a page that was being redacted?

A redacted page?

In my dream I kept envisioning a page in which numerous sentences were being blacked out with a magic marker and the meaning of the writing became increasingly obscure. I woke up in a sweat and then fell back to sleep.

Intriguing. May I ask, aren’t you a candidate for stem cell?

Yeah. I am attempting to reprogram the direction of my biological compass – my brain and eyesight among other things. To exist…is to risk.

Risks can have ambiguous results.

Indeed. I do know once our memory fades it becomes like a redacted page. Relationships then become impaired. 

Do you feel you are losing your memory capability?

Not really. Except how much of my memory is based on reliable, factual information? At what point does non-fiction overlap with fiction or the converse?

Hmm. Is the reliable memory then like a flicker of light like a lightning bug on a summer night?

Remembering becomes selective at best and may serve as a metaphor of something deeper.

Perhaps so.

May I ask?

What?

What is your line of work?

I’m an Editor.

Of what? I asked.

She just smiled and clasped my hand as we walked down to a lake.