The dream took me back as dreams sometimes do

To that previous life.

The time of suits and ties and wingtip shoes

Business meeting haircuts, leather portfolios and hundred-dollar pens

It was a role I knew well but never owned.

Stolen from tv shows and business magazines.

Borrowed from those that took their rehearsals

So much more seriously than I.

I spent the night trying to find the answer

To someone else’s problems.

To prove that I belonged, that I was indeed one of them.

I needed their gratitude to affirm my value

Yet who was I?

I didn’t hear my name spoken, or any name

Was I Rachel or was I Richard?

Is he still in there? And does it really matter, if it was a dream?

Or is it simply a synapse or two that refuses to fade away?

Could it be a message fighting to surface from deep within?

To covey a meaning I cannot seem to grasp.

The question remains, will he always be there

Waiting in the darkness to poison certainty with doubt?