dreaming

It's a familiar place. I'm talking to friends and acquaintances, sitting on some street corner in town, one indistinguishable by its features and only recognizable in feeling. It's snowing. I'm talking and probably laughing occasionally, in a manner which demands no effort or expression. I'm with friends and acquaintances, but their faces are strange and distorted. I only know them by preconceived feeling, through skewed perception. I sit and talk. I cross my legs. I sip some coffee and maybe push around half of a bagel on an eggshell ceramic dish. Then, all of a sudden, I'm at home. I've actually been sitting in my bedroom, as it turns out, talking to different people with different faces. It doesn't startle me or strike me as strange - no - I didn't even notice until thinking about it twice. No - the shift was subtle. The same scene: indistinguishable, somehow recognizable places and faces and feelings. And then there's you.


You walk through my walls. You speak in expressions, through eyes and lips. I don't hear the sounds you make or the words you piece together, how they form sentences and coherent thoughts, but I laugh. I am actually laughing. I am actually happy, intrigued. I am honest.


You sit me down on my bed, in a forest permeated with much fog and light. I hover over us and see your hand on my shoulder, the expression on my face, and feel it all at the same time. I see you with my eyes, from above, and through your eyes, and everything makes sense. Everything is in its right place. Even in the midst of the heavy fog, I can see. I can actually see.


Let me sleep.


But, after all, you're merely an apparition, and I push through you like one. I don't know it then, but I will after remembering for the third time, after thinking twice. I see you like the snow on that indistinguishable street corner in town, like fog in a forest. You melt in my hair and fall all around me, but I can't grasp you. I can't hold you. I see you, though not clearly. You don't see me.


And again, repeatedly, you walk through my walls. You disappear. I am wide awake.