Dream a Little Dream

It was all very confusing.

Or is that ethereal? Perhaps that’s it. It was ethereal. Like a spider web sewn together with the greatest of care; a web that at any moment could be swept away under the darkness of the ocean. The ocean of sleep.

She was dreaming.

Or was she awake? Perhaps she was in that otherworldly realm between consciousness and sleep – that world where reality is within grasp, and yet it is so fragile, so pliable and delicate that one wrong turn would turn it into ridiculousness. It was certainly nothing so profound or philosophical that she would share it with anyone else – in particular, him.

It was all very confusing.

And frustrating! He was there. That boy that never was…and would likely never be. Silly to call him a boy – she’d known him almost half her life. Could that be right? Let’s see. She was 18 when she met him. Ahh. Relief. She still had a couple of years before meeting that milestone. And he was certainly a boy no longer. He was speaking, but what he was saying was gone; like watching the television with no volume. He was also gazing at her with a disconcerting intensity; his eyes boring holes into her soul so deep it would surely unnerve her. For reasons she could never understand, he had the ability to do that. Her mind drifted back to those days years ago, and how he used to kiss her with that same intensity – how she could never really catch her breath, and conversely, how she could never really surrender wholly to its force.

She would never understand why that was.

They were standing in his apartment – nearly empty but for the flowing sheer curtains covering two walls – walls of windows, standing perpendicular to each other. She turned her back to him to escape his gaze and the honesty of his words – she had a feeling that he was laying his soul bare, and yet she wouldn’t allow herself to pay the words their proper heed. Instead, looking for a distraction - she opened the curtains wide in order to discover what was hiding behind them. For a moment she was perplexed – surely a skyline so encompassing could not exist in the city where he laid his head each night? The view before her rivaled the skylines of New York or San Francisco. Perhaps this wasn’t his apartment at all, but a high rise hotel room in Belfast or Bombay or Rome, and she was there with him.

An excited shiver went down her spine. Maybe this time the dream was coming true! Yes – this? This was the adventure they had always spoken about, but never earnestly tried to make a reality. Was she ready to listen? She paused, unsure.

What was it he was saying again? It was always like this with him; they were always on a different wavelength, a different path going in entirely different directions. She suddenly remembered that time he compared their plight to those of two ships passing in the night. What a perfect analogy – when she was ready to listen, he would be done speaking and would have moved on to something else. She would be disappointed when it was her turn to speak, and instead – he chose to gaze out the window.

And what of it? Surely if there was anything to it (“it” being a potential “them”), it would have happened by now. They would have dropped all of their concerns by the wayside, laid bare their deepest of thoughts and fears, explored that undercurrent of passion that always bubbled beneath the surface. As it was, the “passion” was no longer. It had dwindled with the passing of time.

She still couldn’t make out what he was saying, and so she allowed herself to explore this train of thought further.

...perhaps they had met before, in a previous realm or existence, and promised to make a better go of it the next time around; in the next life. Further explore a bond they had created elsewhere. Maybe one of them subconsciously determined that such a bond would have been better left undone, much to the chagrin of the other. Or further still, perhaps they were linked by some terrible misfortune, and wanted a chance to make it right. A little like…let’s see. Like Anne Boleyn and her Henry VIII.

Ridiculous, she thought, even for a dream.

More probably, they were just too different – like puzzle pieces that you are sure MUST fit together, the ones you constantly go back to – you force them, will them to unite because they look so compatible - until you realize that your eyes had been deceiving you, and really? That one piece belongs clear on the other side of the board. Fits happily…elsewhere.

Hmm. No, that’s not quite right either.

No, this was a case of two people, connected by…something, something we won’t label. It wasn’t passion, it wasn’t chemistry or kismet; “it” just…was.

It was all very confusing, much unfinished, wholly undefined.

And then she woke up.

How frustrating.