I Had A Dream

I drifted off to the dancing of the passing car’s headlights finding their way from the streets, to just in between the spaces of my blinds. My eyelids began to give in to the weight of the day that had passed. As my mind shut down, everything in my line of sight just kind of went blurry, and I listened closely as I heard my heart slow as its beats reverberated throughout my bones. I didn’t fight it. This was one night where I was desperate to lose my waking conscious, and to find myself in an altered one instead. Something was different this time though. Everything seems to always just get quieter during my entrances to sleep; I forget about the sounds outside of my head as they matter less and less on my way into incoherence. But I felt something building up, matching my dimming attentiveness; like the tensions of a building orchestra, just without the sounds. A number of reversed cymbals followed and peaked at the moment that I finally gave in, and let my acuity run far from this place.

I awoke in this dream founded upon passions that could ember even rivers into unstoppable wild fires. And the strangest thing is that I felt coherent when I opened my eyes to this place; it all just made sense, somehow; at least in my heart, it did. I don’t meet many dreamers anymore, and I plead guilty to being one of them who has lost the majority of that innocence about themselves. One downfall to being a realist ninety percent of the time is that these things just stop making sense at some point, and so, the lantern that lights the entrance of that cavern slowly dies, until that final gust of wind comes to put it out. I still dream, just not with the naivety that I used to; life ripped that innocence away from me, like it does to a lot of us. Maybe that’s why this place made so much sense; I still had here what life took from me a long time ago: The faith that these things, no matter how improbable, could all become true.

I dreamt that we loved one-another with such a passion that our very own souls could hardly believe it, along with the fall that we suffered from it; no one survives heights like that and lives to tell of a lasting contentment. Had I not had my own two eyes to witness it, and my own heart to experience it, my soul simply would have refused the idea and possibility of it. And as for those rivers; they lit with one spark, and you should have seem them burning. They were stories high; uncontrollable, insuppressible, and unapproachable.

We were our own story from prose about two people living with more passion than this world has to offer; entirely scripted from the words out of our mouths, the thoughts inside of our heads, and the love inside of our hearts. Together, we climbed this mountain above everybody else that still loves or has ever loved, and we watched everyone else as they tried to make it up to the very top where we stood so proudly; our honor contracted in silhouette. We were as kings. Even the world’s most indomitable saviors and their serenity would have dropped to their knees at the bottom of this rigid piece of earth that only we could claim as ours. They knew that before us, only the sun had seen the heights of this place. We were rhapsody, and we were rapture; neither physically nor mentally above the others, but emotionally instead.

I picked you up at the very top and pressed my lips into yours with more feeling than any other moment that I have felt in my entire life, and you kissed me back the same. As we parted I told you that I loved you, and I pulled you in closer and pressed you into me so tightly that I felt every part of you in my arms in my sleep, just as I felt myself in yours. Everything was irrefutable. Everything was undoubtable; from the way that your skin felt, to the way that your arms enwrapped and claimed me as yours, to the way that your hand held so tightly onto mine. The inner lining of my chest felt like it could have ruptured from everything that it held within itself for you; it was the complete opposite of lonely. My own form of suppression had to be forced upon it out of the contradicting discomfort that its size could give off inside of this cavity that usually doesn’t feel anything at all anymore. And you looked at me and told me that you loved me just the same. Our lips met again, and everyone from below could only stare up at us and watch, wonder, and wish; just wish that a love like that would find them one day.

It seemed so real that when I awoke, I awoke so happy; I welcomed the daylight more than I ever have. In a rush, and out of complete unashamed, undeterred, entirely honest, and insuppressible emotion, I pushed the sheets from atop of me and I turned to tell you how much that I really do love you. At this moment, all of my formal spillings and “I love you's” held only a fraction’s worth of this ones; they just didn’t compare. So my head snapped forward, my eyes widened, my mind undoubtedly knew where I belonged, and my heart skipped as I rushed to let out this uncontrollable need to tell you how much that I loved you; I could hardly even breathe, it was choking me as I tried to force my heart through my throat so quickly. So I swallowed all of my fears that just couldn’t get to me at these heights where we found ourselves, and through the flames that these rivers became and surrounded us with, and I turned to you; to one of the things that I thought that life put me here for. My eyes curved and rolled across a bend as I looked in your direction to your side of the bed, adorning my utmost devotion; like a child; like that child that I used to be.

And it was here that my smile straightened, my sense of belonging shifted, and everything, inside and out, just went numb. My mind froze, the tensions of the orchestra disappeared, and everything just went silent. My confusion claimed me until I could catch up to where it left me lagging behind, where I went void to the realization that your side was as empty as it was quiet; as empty as I had ever seen it before; as empty as the beats that my heart skipped when I suddenly remembered the sounds of your footsteps leaving a long time ago. That’s the other end to this whole dreaming thing; from heaven, to hell. It was a mere reminder that you left your devotion a long time ago. Even with mine still sitting right next to me to remind me of that loss, somehow, I just forgot.

So I closed my eyes, intertwined my waking reality with my altered one, and in my head I approached those rivers whose flames began to drown. I approached what was once, inapproachable; the fire lessened with every step that I took and drew myself closer with. I saw the ashes departing with the wind as they were carried to some place that I’ll never know of, and I watched as they spread to the tree lines far from me, like snow falling in reverse. I reminded myself that as those rivers burned, they burned because of our passion. And the only flame left when I reached the bank was the one burning from my tireless emotions; yours were nothing but absent. Sincere love is involuntary, and the love that is most sincere never truly dies, but only dims instead, at best. A lot of us mask our former loves, like it’s something to hide. Or what’s worse, a lot of us forget them. But I’ll never hide behind the few collected moments of my life that I was spared the feeling of not being enough; those moments are the only times in life that ever really made sense so far; the only moments that existence explained its placement here to me in a perfect explanation through this thing that we all call our hearts and their companioning feelings. My intuition just tells me that there is more to this thing that we call love than just finding someone to simply lose them and move on some odd timeframe later. There has got to be more to it than that; more to this feeling that has proven to be the most impressionable, precious, brilliant, and unbelievable emotion that we are capable of. Though I’ll never understand this world’s abandonments towards justifiable love, I reinstated the aftermaths of fire as I left my final pieces of devotion toward you at the riverbank, turned myself around, began to walk slowly, and told myself quietly: Everything that is false has a timeline, and as it burns with its partnering hourglass, it all eventually turns into nothing but a memory, just like your passion did. The only things that stay are the only things that are undoubtable; the only things that are irrefutable; and the only things that are untouchable, even by fire. As I walked away, I smiled knowing that my passion passed my own tests.

A spot on that river still burns in the remembrance of what my heart is capable of feeling, and for the respect that you deserve for claiming those feelings at one point in my life; a spot, barely keeping the riverbank lit with light; one for you, and one for the only other girl that I have ever loved. They meant more to me than just forgetting about. And the courage that that takes from me will never be a weakness.