I’ve always felt so lucky having had you to fill out a chapter in my life. The more time that rolls past, the less I think of you, and yet, in my dreams, like the one I just dreamed, you were as alive and present as I ever could recall. Like you were really there, or here, as it were. It makes me wonder; do you ever dream of me? Do you even ever think of us and what could’ve been? It’s not something to dwell upon I suppose, or even necessarily important. It’s difficult to imagine, however, a film playing in my sleep so authentic and crazy real, without the force of both minds adrift and with will. If it’s so, and I guess we’ll never know, that these movies of us do unfold as you lay asleep; do you wake with as pleasant a high all around, like say, that of poppy tea, craving it were all real, or at least real again? Clinging to a small sliver of a synapse, yet understanding so well, it was all but a movie playing in your dreams?
I still feel so lucky, to have experienced a love like yours, who had me too, who can still penetrate the night, even still, overcoming the terrible fears. Funny how the darkness at times can shine so hot and bright? Irony is the term, I suppose? The way that gulf of emptiness with its opaque pool of fright, can so suddenly feel like the safest home? And then you’re there, above my head, just like those nights so long ago. That sweet smell of jasmine, that soft laugh and clever sparkle, could I ever forget? No, not as long as I can pretend, that these films about ghosts, will someday transcend a level below just my sullen head.
They say the best sleep is the kind that allows your brain to dump all its waste, a sort of toxic cleansing. This may in fact be true? After all these years apart, separated by oceans and strife, your voice, like a fingerprint, sticks to my mind. I sometimes hear you calling out, softly, giggling at the sight of me folding clothes, or trying to figure out the remote, or at the way I always seemed to load the toilet paper backwards on the spool. Thinking back now, those were the good things, the most private of inside jokes. Those little particulars are ultimately the stuff I miss the most because they are the unique tiles in a mosaic that was built to hide our love in place. Those are the things that can never be replaced. You can never be replaced. I haven’t even tried.
All things find their end, emotional atrophy. The hard feelings. The good times, even the best. Even the feeling I have tonight will end. We cannot live forever. There’s no substitute for that beginning with you. That first kiss…”just to get it out of the way,” you’d say. I remember so clearly, that electric moment of pulsing neon; it brings a tear to my eye every time, sometimes more. This isn’t about that though. Well, maybe everything’s about that? This isn’t about those yesterday’s past. Does everyone have that one true love that’s lost? Is it just part of our maturity, like a learning permit or a first funeral? Or is this all just a sleight of hand, black magic practiced on those of us too blind to see the present, to shallow to split the cell?
If you see this, you know who you are. I wont presume, or beg, or plead like maybe I should have long ago. Tonight, I’ll simply go for a walk under the stars, keep my chin up and my head held high, asking, that wherever you find yourself tonight, among the stars, on the sea, or in a quiet home, when you glance upwards…are you seeing the same sky as me?
AKBOOGY 