Flight Dreams (from Unmarked Treasure - Cyril Wong)

I often dreamt of flying when I was younger.
Such dreams supposedly meant
that I had feelings of entrapment in my real life.
It was true. Back then I believed
I was determined to lead a life
my parents would be proud of: I would attain
a degree, a job, remain a Christian, marry a nice girl.
During those days, I would fly
off balconies, jump off the tops of flats and swim
through air for hours in my sleep.

Then I discovered a part of me that rose up
in a hundred bedrooms that eventually
looked like each other, when a stranger’s
hand or mouth would push me back into myself,
only to suck me back out again by the shock
of the body’s capacity for desire
like a black wave rolling back and forth,
back and forth right through me.

I remember I was catapulted from that claustrophobic
room of my parents’ dream of my future.
I believed I began to understand myself
for the first time. The idea of a self
was an astronaut who had been cut
free from his spacecraft and made to float
straight out into a starry nothingness.

For a long time after that, I could not recall
the last time I actually dreamt of flying.

from Unmarked Treasure - Cyril Wong