I dream about it sometimes. The kind of dream that isn't a memory, but an earmark of a moment passed.
In the dream I'm floating through a garden of lush flowers, with petals that gleam and radiate a soft glow. My gown barely touches the ground as I glide over light stems. The trunks bow at my passing then resume their stature of pristine beauty. Sometime in the dream, I sit somewhere in the garden, and my being encircles you.
My knees rest in a tent created by my gown and I hold you in my hands, like a little bird with broken wings. But in the dream you are no bird, you are a flower. With blade like petals that couldn't cut butter and yet, administer the deepest wound, in the dream. In the dream I play 'I love you, I love you not', and with each petal of yours that I strip away to ask those two silly questions, you die. But only in the dream.
Morning, New York. I'm at least a couple of miles away from the train station but I feel like I can hear it. The city is alive with activity, like veins during a panic attack.
I'm not panicked, not even a little, but Fluffy doesn't like the noise, or the feet. She furrows deeper into my chest. We've got to catch a cab. But as my eyes dart back and forth, they catch you instead. I don't know it's you till the tinted windows slide down and you smile up at me.
You're going my way so I hop in.
It's awkward.
I know its awkward because the smell of leather is heavy on my nose and the seat is warm beneath me. You just got the car and dropped someone off before you happened upon me. I know these things because my mind is working overtime trying to dustract me. I can feel you squirm and grope for something solid enough to break the ice, if it merely thaws you know we would probably never speak again, because old friends seldom ever make reacquaintance if they fail at the first attempt.
You see Fluffy and a smile breaks out like dawn on your face, you reach over and pet her. She purs. I suddenly speak feline and know she's ratting me out. Snitching about my sleepless nights and our pillow talks. You ask me how old she is now and after that the awkwardness passes quickly and we play catch up with a flourish of characters and events and moments that we should've shared, but the latter goes without mentioning. Because it's the elephant in the room, it announces itself.
You drop me off and I promise to call, there's sadness in your eye because you know, like I do, that I never will, I almost do, but never.
As I watch you speed tentatively off, I think of that day. The day that haunts my dreams with allegories.
On that day we were in your apartment, not a garden. You'd paused mid sentence and begun looking past me, staring down my soul.
"What's wrong?" I asked. Stupid question, because nothing was wrong, the vein in your neck, the moist on your lips the song on the radio all pointed to the fact that everything was terribly perfect. Maybe that's what scared me. It was all too good to be true.
"I love you." You said and my fear became horror. I swallowed, I staggered and found myself on the edge of your couch. My head dipped into my hands and made as if to cry, but instead they floated back up again.
You ran to me as though sensing I was on the brink of flight, you landed on your knees and said it again. "I swear to god that I love you. And I know that you love me too."
"I don't." I said, and I had spoken too soon.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life."-King David.
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