on dreaming
The doors know me. The air is the same suffocating paper air. The catalog is never updated, only the arrangements change shape.
REM comes rarely, and when it comes it doesn't feel like sleep. It feels like being admitted (again) into a private archive. My mind pulls out faces I've lost and rooms I've left and sets them under a bright, careful light, as if precision could become mercy. It offers me a reconstruction:
the laugh that almost returns and makes my chest lift before I can decide to hope
the shared quiet after laughter, when the room feels briefly arranged for us
a glance that carries an entire history and refuses to translate
the doorway that opens into the wrong room, but with the right light pooled on the floor like it used to
a face I've forgotten until it leans close and my body recognizes it first
a touch on the back of my neck that isn't sexual, just unmistakably mine
a voice saying my name the way it was once said, like it had a place to land
a silence between us where I understand everything and can say nothing
a hand offered, not taken, and the entire night reorganizing around that distance
the moment before the leaving held too long
I hate dreaming. There is no kindness in a past made vivid for a few minutes, then withdrawn. I wake into daylight with a longing that won't speak its own name. Only the shape of it, still warm, still impossible.