Lucid

It’s the ultimate cliché: being in the perfect moment, with the perfect person, and then you wake up. Turns out everything was just a dream. How many times is that used in stories as a cop out? It’s a quick fix ending when you want to finish something. No one gets hurt, nobody dies. The protagonist wakes up and thinks, “Woah, that was weird. Glad it was just a dream.” A wink to camera, smashing the fourth wall and you’re done.

This is one of those stories. I’ve ruined it now by telling you, I suppose, but the concept hardly held much suspense to start with.

The dream always starts with me waking up. He’s there, sleeping next to me. I’m a morning person so I’m up first. That bit always happens. He snuffles and rolls over so that his sleeping face is pressed into the pillow towards me.

I stay still for a second, watching him sleep. Creepy – I know, but the slow rise and fall of his chest reminds me how fleeting everything is. I curl up on my side and trace his cheek with my little finger, making sure that I savour that moment. Every moment. I blink, snapping my eyes open and shut like I’m taking a photo. Nothing will be forgotten.

After a couple of minutes I get out of bed, tucking the cover up to keep him warm. The room is messy, so I have to tread carefully, avoiding my suitcase and all his drawing materials. There’s a baggy t-shirt on the floor, along with almost everything else of mine. I throw it over my head and shuffle into a pair of slippers.

My feet carry me to the door, and I take one last look at him before I slip out of the room. I pad through to the kitchen, and smile to myself as I switch the kettle on. The kitchen’s pretty big. Brown counter tops, and a vinyl floor. There’s a table in the middle with chairs scattered around it and a pretty white cloth spread over it.

It’s always different though, the décor. This mind of mine isn’t quite capable of dreaming up his actual house so it scuffs around, different every time. Hoping that with enough trial and error, it’ll get it right eventually.

At this point the kettle boils. I make myself a cup of tea and sit at the table. In some versions of the dream, I simply sit and watch the steam rise from my mug, but in this one I’m reading. If I’m reading, it’ll always be what I’m actually reading in real life.

My copy of It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is heavy in my hand. I turn the page and take a mouthful of tea. It scolds my tongue but I don’t feel it, I don’t taste it either. I simply continue to sip at it until it’s gone. After that I rinse the mug and sit back down.

I read some more, a couple more chapters, and somehow when I next look up it’s almost an hour later. In that magic way that dreams can, I’ve looked down for seemingly two seconds but really skipped time forward as I willed it to.

Then I’m walking back to the bedroom. I let my hand drag along the white walls of the corridor that I imagine are there. Maybe there are photos on the walls too, maybe there’s a potted plant sitting in the corner, but I don’t notice it if there is.

The door creaks as I open it, and he stirs but doesn’t wake up yet. I laugh, then sit on the floor next to my suitcase. I’m stuffing clothes back into it, and I find something he’s drawn. It’s underneath a dark pair of jeans and a light t-shirt, screwed up into a ball. I smooth it out, and it’s gorgeous. It’s always different. Sometimes it’s a picture of me, but sometimes it’s not. Either way I love it, and I roll it up carefully and tuck it into my case.

Skip forward two minutes, and I shut my suitcase. It’s nowhere near organized, but even my dream-self feels the need to organize the messy floor just a little bit.

My skin prickles and goose-bumps rise along my legs. I’m only wearing a shirt and it’s cold. I pick myself up off the floor and climb back into bed. The covers are warm and I snuggle myself right into his side.

And that’s when he wakes up. He yawns, smiles into the pillow, and makes grabby hands at me. I shuffle closer – as close as we can be without morphing into one being, and my head rests just in the crook of his neck. A perfect fit, like a jigsaw.

“You’re cold,” he says sleepily. He runs a lazy finger down my arm like he’s trying to feel my skin every way imaginable, and I’m sure he is. I’m sure he’s banking every touch, and burning everything into tidy little memories.

Our legs are tangled together, but I push myself up slightly so we’re face to face on his pillows. I’m always nervous at this point, I don’t know why. It’s that nervous/excited kind of feeling though. Butterflies in your stomach that are just a little on the large side. The same kind of nerves I always feel when I think about him, they’ve never gone away.

His eyes are so blue, it almost hurts to look at them. Deep and rich, an ocean sort of colour. I smile, because he’s my sea and I’m lost in him. He kisses me, and I feel it. Not just in my dream, but I feel it in my resting self. My whole body is glowing, and the dream stops.

I’m awake and I’m alone. It’s dark, and my duvet is wrapped so tight around me it may as well be a cocoon.

This isn’t a surprise ending. You and I both knew the end right from the start, but that doesn’t make it any easier when my eyes open and he’s not there. My ocean sleeps hundreds of miles away from me in his own bed, and I’m homesick, longing for the tide to come in.

And yes, it hurts. It’s a slow ache in my chest, like there’s a piece of my heart being stretched out west towards Dublin. But sometimes, I wake up alone with my phone buzzing and it’s from him. And just in those few moments, it’s okay, because we’re alone, together.