THE SKELETON DREAMS
Monday 
THE SKELETON DREAMS
There we stood, side by side, the two of us together, your hand pressed softly into mine and mine like callused leather. While in dark and abstract symmetry grey clouds stretched out forever and we sought the nearest shelter to escape the maddening weather.
We sprinted 'cross the gloomy park, down grim deserted lanes, but the heavy droplets found us there we could not elude the rain. The wind howled like a spirit it hurled us up the street. We felt like we were flying, we couldn't even feel our feet.
Then we were wet, depressed, on marble steps, beneath an ornate wooden crest at 'The Museum of Fable and Memory' and t'was there we took our rest. Above us white doves clustered on the gantries, on the eves, whilst high atop the frosty towers we could see the gargoyles breathe.
The storm was now a misty veil drawn down around our eyes. The building begged us, "Enter. Come in it's warm and dry". We found ourselves confused and lost in the dank disquieting gloom in a place of endless corridors and, still, more endless rooms.
In a palace of stale history where nothing ever moved, where animals held strange poses like a tragic frozen zoo. We soon lost our direction in that mansion, in that maze, so we paused before a cabinet and the thing that it displayed.
Stripped bare he stood before us, ageless, timeless, trapped in glass, his bones exposed to prying eyes, his fragile form unmasked. Each bone held firmly in its place by tiny little pins. While ink stained numbers on paper discs dotted each and every limb.
And on that plinth where he reposed, on that dais, on that stand, a text embossed in gold proclaimed 'The Skeleton of Man'. Then you asked of me that question all children ask in time, my answer was expedient, "He sleeps", my sly reply.
What mischief raced across your face? What bright delight? What schemes? What thoughts now caught in swirls of light too innocently gleam? "If you say he's only sleeping in these halls of academe, then what secrets is he keeping? Dad, of what do skeletons dream?"
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