There is a space between our fingers, and with every inhale, it grows closer. My breath grows uneven, desperate, as I reach to your floating hand - a silver shadow in the hollow mist. I feel the steady beat of my own heart, making its gentle climb to my ears, and I can tell the thin fabric of this unreality is beginning to crack around my periphery.
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Just one more breath, one more inch, and my hand will finally touch yours.
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I make a final inhale, watching my own thin fingers strain against the white, almost touching yours, but the sudden movement is enough to break whatever delicate spell that kept me asleep. The grey-white clouding my mind’s eye begins to dim, darkening to a familiar black, and I once again find myself staring into the black of my own shut eyelids.
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I strain them, forcing them to shut tight in protest, and doing all that I can to clear my mind in a foul attempt to return to the comfort of the dream once more. A dream where, although I cannot see your face, I can feel you there - reaching for me too.
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We’ve done this dance for almost three months now.
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The first dream started as any other, full of the meandering nonsense as dreams often are, only to be coolly interrupted by a thick mist, beginning at my feet. It surrounded me, absorbing the scene around me, having props and people alike disappear in fine particles of warm dust, until there was nothing but the soft color around my barren body. Yet, even though I saw nothing but the blank canvas of warm grey color in my mind’s eye, well aware now of my own dream-state, I knew I was not alone.
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There is often an uneasy, bitter anxiety that hangs onto the uncanny feeling when you know you are being watched. Perhaps a primeval remnant still bound to the human code, nerves begin to fray, tingle, and hearts race when there is someone there, seeing you before you can see them.
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But no, in the first dream, there was no sense of unease, not even when you seemed to swallow everything around me. I knew you were there, watching me, and instead of the onset of familiar anxiety, I was instead met with a warmth in my core, an unfamiliar hunger, a longing to see you in return. It was there, even on the very first night, that I began to reach for you.
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As my hand stretched into the blank space of warm mist, I wanted nothing more than to have your hands meet mine. I wanted your warmth, your core, your embrace, more than anything.
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Even then I knew that you were reaching for me too.
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And although I have not yet seen you, heard you, nor touched you, I know you.
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In the core of my being, I know you.
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And when I see your hand reaching for mine every night, I think you know me too.
I find myself longing for sleep even when the sun is high in the sky. Even as I pass by the faceless bodies in the city streets, heavy shoulders pushing mine - the scratching sounds of the city, trumpeting and shrill - all these things used to bother me so. But now… now I only think of the next time I can rest my head upon my pillow, closing my eyes in the aching hope that I can feel your presence just once more.
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Tell me, do you feel the same?
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Are your waking hours only an inconvenience?
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It would be a lie if I said I did not still look for you during the dread of the daytime. Even now, as I sit here at this bustling coffee shop, porcelain cup warming my hands, I find myself watching the steady, quick pace of those just outside the large bay window. I watch these strangers pass on the crowded sidewalk, unaware of my steady scanning of each strange face, hoping to feel that same warm comfort within myself as all these nights before.
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If I saw you, would I recognise you?
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Are you even real?
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I shake my head. Of course you are real. Nothing in my life has ever felt as real as you before.
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As I take a sip of this bitter drink, I wonder if you look for me too.
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There is a tap on my shoulder, and my heart skips a beat, but when I turn my head it is only the waitress telling me that they will be closing soon. I nod. It seems as though I have been looking out this coffee shop window all day.
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I can’t help but smile as I step through the cafe doors, a gentle chime behind me as they shut. The streetlights blink on and I stretch my stiff arms behind my back, looking onto the thinning streets. Alas, time for sleep once more.
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As I reach my apartment door, something catches my eye. There is a speck of white against the industrial grey hall carpet, and I kneel down to see what it is. My hands pinch something tiny and velvet and I bring it closer to my face.
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To my surprise, there is a single, torn moth wing between my fingertips. I hold it to the light to get a better look, and the delicate wing shines like a pearl. I turn it, back and forth, back and forth, watching as it sparkles in even the dull hall light. I find myself smiling again.
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Did you leave this for me, my dream one? Is this a gift, a sign, something to let me know that you indeed are real and are looking for me too?
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It’s strange how something so small, so mundane, now has so much potential now. Perhaps this is just some sordid moth’s wing, meeting their demise on my doorstep, true. But my mind can’t help but drift, weaving with ease, trying to connect you to this dreary visceral world.
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Everywhere I look, every second glance I get on the street, every scratched cryptic message in the back of the plastic bus seat… it’s you.
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As I lay my head down, I find myself filled with a childish giddiness, most embarrassingly so. But, my dear dream one, I cannot help myself. It’s been more and more difficult these days to finally fall asleep, as the excitement, the sheer prospect of encountering you again, rattles my news awake, causing me to toss and turn for far too long for my liking. It is nights like these that I take the pills - bitter at first, but reliable nonetheless. A few still swallows and I am out cold within only a few breaths. Paralyzed even enough to ignore the trail of bedbugs, making their little red dots in wandering lines on my arms and legs.
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This night, I did not dream of you. My mind only flashed glimpses of the day before, stagnant and loathsome, without the same splendid spark as so many nights before. As I open my eyes in the daybreak, sliver of window light hitting my face, I can’t help but wonder -
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Did I do something to upset you?
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Did I, in all my infinite flaws, do something wrong? Perhaps you caught glimpse of me, before I could properly ready myself, when I walked the streets alone on my way home. But no, that could not be - as you left me such a precious gift - the shining wing now resting on my nightstand.
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Perhaps it was a parting favor, as you found yourself disgusted by putrid demeanor - a cryptkeeper of a man, unfit for any view, nonetheless in your grand presence. For next to you, I know I am nothing, a gnat beneath your shoe, a rat beneath your floorboards.
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But am I wrong to still seek you? For it was you who found me first - it’s your warm seduction that has me rushing to sleep every night. So why - why do you abandon me tonight?
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I find myself angry, sickened at this betrayal. Have you no regard for what I sacrificed to be with you? I have lost jobs, lost friends and family - all to be with you. Yet you deny me - why?
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I try to shut my eyes, cover myself, but sleep eludes me in the bright light of morning. So I will look for you again - here in the waking hours. Perhaps if I finally find you - finally see you in the flesh, you will explain yourself and make everything better. I’m sure there is an answer, a reasoning I am surely missing.
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The hot waft of disgusting city air, damp and decaying, sweet and sour, hits my face as I walk the same path as many days before. I search every single face, young and old for your face, for I know once I see it, everything will become clear.
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Will we embrace? Will you hold me like all of those nights before, swallowing me into your core with the same velvet touch? Will you tell me you’re sorry for abandoning me last night, that it was all just a misunderstanding, and that you will make it up to me?
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The same cafe waitress sees me again, and nods. She already knows my order - same as it has been every day for the past three months. Black coffee. What a dreary life she must lead - same shop every single day of her life. She looks far too old for this to be some sort of temporary, fresh from college gig. I can tell by the way she puts her hair up in the same tired bun and the lines beneath her eyes that she coats with cheap makeup that she really seems to have given up. Perhaps long ago she was a great beauty, or at least enough to catch the wandering eyes of the eager boys her age. But now she lost it. It’s pitiful, really.
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Nothing like you, no.
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I scratch my head - it seems to have grown far more itchy these days. I’m afraid I haven’t bathed in a while, not out of laziness, but it seems like such a waste of time. And I know, if you really loved me as I know you do, such silly things would not matter. You’re better than all of that vanity nonsense.
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There is a chime, and someone else enters the little cafe - someone I don’t recognize. I try to read their face, but they keep turning away. I’m craning my neck, trying to see past the rest of those gathered at the bakery counter, but can barely catch any successful glimpse. I could scream.
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Get. Out. Of. The. Way.
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These wretches, wastes of space, all of them.
Bumbling about their daily lives, not a productive, unique thought between them.
Little buzzing drones. It’s disgusting.
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The shuffling continues - since when are there this many people at the cafe? Is there some sort of event I’m unaware of?
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Finally, there is a break from the crowd, and I watch as the stranger sits all by themselves in a corner booth, black coffee in hand. Their head is lowered, reading something on their phone, so I’m unable to get a clear look at their face before they place a heavy backpack on the table.
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The backpack. Something shining. A beacon in the soft cafe light. It’s calling to me. Even from here. It’s calling to me.
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I find myself hyperventilating, and I feel sweat begin to gather on the back of my neck.
Upon the backpack is a silver pin.
A moth.
Everyone else may not have noticed it - but I did.
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I did.
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It’s you - It has to be you. There’s no one else in the world that it could be. You knew to come here - to this cafe during this specific time because you knew.
You knew that I would be here - waiting for you.
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It’s time. It’s finally time. For us to be together. Here, in the flesh, no longer bound by the confines of night.
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Now we can finally be together.
Dream together.
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