Build Me a City and Call It Jerusalem

by deanisgayforcas

Title taken from a Richard Siken poem called "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out." Merlin has dreams about life in Camelot, ones that leave him feeling empty. His dreams are always about Arthur. He wants Arthur to come back alive and he's sick of waiting for something that might never happen.

Build Me a City and Call it Jerusalem

You're sitting in a field of flowers: blue, purple, springing up all around you. You're lonely and you can't remember why. Tears stream down your face, a relentless waterfall that cannot be quenched, and your heart is tearing in two.

You're at a lake, in a little golden boat, and all of a sudden heaviness finds its way into your heart. Your head hurts, your ears are ringing. Sadness claws at you, making tiny holes in your skin, where the badness leaks through and shows all over your face your unhappiness. You can't understand why you feel so alone.

A little kid runs past you, a red cape fluttering in the breeze. The red burns underneath your lids. You remember red capes, lots of them, and a golden dragon emblazoned on them. You don't know if it's from a scene in a movie you once watched or from a book you read once when you were a kid. But the red stands out. Pendragon Red, you think. And that fills you with terror and hurt and a longing so deep that you fall on your knees and can't breathe.

A flash of golden hair, that shines bright, like the sunshine, soft as spun silk in between your fingertips. Crooked teeth and a crooked smile, the one that makes your heart melt and your stomach drop. Crystalline blue eyes, so deep, so wide, so trusting. They were an ocean and you got lost in them. You were drowning in the blue pools, struggling against the waves crashing down on you. You couldn't breathe. Soft hands grasping at tender flesh. Silver chainmail being pried off his body. Insults being hurled around, like prat and clotpole and dollophead and that one time he says Shut up, Merlin and you rolled your eyes. There are shoves being called horseplay, water being tossed on you, sword fights and nights around a blistering campfire and golden eyes and magic. Definitely magic.

These images haunt your dreams, plague you like the living dead. They wake you up at night, gasping, tears making your cheeks damp. Your heart hurts and you're tired, so so tired, and can't find the rest you so desperately crave. Your bones ache and your fingers are stiff. Your lips quiver and you just want the images to stop. You don't want to feel sad anymore. You don't want to remember. They feel so real. They feel like a world that existed long ago in the minds of men, legends that turn into myths, heroes lost among the seas and vacant land spaces. It's a world of knights in shining armour and sorcerers who cast spells, kings who live in castles and servants who follow their masters even to their death. There is heartache and sorrow, death and carnage at every turn. But there is also hope and smiles, community and friendship, faith and love. And so much golden magic brimming in the core of your stomach, filling the expanses between your fingertips, humming with each pleasant memory.

But the dreams aren't memories; they are lies, fantasies. You get up every morning and try to shake the dreams away with tea and coffee, with Bukowski and Star Trek and your job at the grocery store. You smoke until all your cigarettes are ashes and let rivulets of water fall on you while you are frozen under the stream, because you can't move and can't feel a thing besides numb and longing. You are waiting for your life to begin. You are praying for magic, praying for peace, praying for the world inside your head to spring from existence and greet you like an old familiar stranger, to wrap you in its arms and whisper welcome home.

You keep waiting and waiting for something to be returned to you. It never comes.