Usually I rested peacefully through the night. Drifting from stream to river, flowing delicately down into the crystal blue oceans of the dream world.

But not tonight.

Tonight the waves of my subconscious crashed and collided against jagged rocks, jumped blindly down waterfalls. Free falling into the darkest depths of the ocean, as a my mind is met with a wall of black abyss.

Only then am I able to feel the crushing weight of yesterday, of every word left unsaid, of every word said. The warmth of your hand resting on my chest like the golden suns rays bringing comfort, peace and a sense of familiarity I now long for in the night.

I’ve always felt like I was looking for something impossible to find.
Searching for something or someone to fill this imaginary void, this emptiness left behind by fleeting lovers in the night.

So many times I’d thought I’d found it;
In a strangers touch , or a temporary moment of passion between bedsheets, naked bodies intertwined warm and present.
But that was never it, it could never be that simple.

It wasn’t a void that could just be filled by a attractive stranger
No matter how sweet his words or gentle his touch.
All that meant nothing.
I know that now.

I know that because I know that it’s you.
It’s always been you, of course it has.
Everyone else was just...just a pause button on us, a momentary plot twist, a what if moment.

Like one of those beautiful picture pages in a storybook,
Pleasing to the eye but all I wanted was to get to the next chapter, the next part of our story.

It was right there in front of me ,
black and white on the page but still I couldn’t see it.
But as I lay here listening to the whispers of the stars in the darkness, nothing could be more clear.

Every path I took, every turn in every road
Every current in the ocean lead me back to you.

The truth is I never hated him
How could I?
How could I possibly hate something that once bought so much light to my eyes
It would be like cursing the sun as it hid itself away behind the clouds at night
Forgetting in that moment how it kissed your golden skin as you daydreamed blissfully amongst the grass.

If I can ask one thing of you, promise me this,
Never to call me the girl of your dreams
For I know I cannot be that.
Your dream girl, this fantasy creature only seen when the lights are out,
as your mind wanders far into the night, searching for her in every dark corner of your subconscious.

In fact
I don’t wish to be any mans dream
Not yours, not his, not theirs.
Instead, Let me be your reality
The girl you wake up to from these dreams
The real, the physical, the flawed

Can we share the broken pieces of our pasts, the pieces people said were too sharp, too fragmented to be fixed.
Let it be me to stitch together the wounds left behind on your skin by lovers and friends
The glue that holds together the fragments of your broken trust.
The warmth to soothe the coldness of the worn out heart you carry; heavy, in the cavity of your chest

See, the thing with dreams is eventually we have to wake up.
And if I can ask just one more thing of you, I promise this will be the last
Be here when I open my eyes in the morning,
Be my reality, my beautifully imperfect reality.

As I stared into the leafy green abyss surrounding me, I started to wonder exactly what I was doing here.

Sitting on the edge of what seemed like paradise, it's still you my mind can't quite escape.
Turquoise seas fill the colossal space between us, crashing beneath the crystal blue skies
and as the sun creeps slowly from behind the hills, memories of you creep up along with it.

Out from the depths of my memory
come thoughts I'd tried for so long to forget.
You sneak up into the coldest corner of my heart,
the part I closed off long ago hoping to become numb to the feelings you evoke.

But instead, thoughts of you warm my entire being with a comforting sense of familiarity.
You feel like home.

Home on an icy winters night,
us warming our frost bitten hands over a crackling log fire as the low hum of the radio whispers in the air around us.
Home, early on a Sunday morning,
our bodies heavy with sleep,
intricately entangled beneath last nights sheets.

But I forget sometimes;
I left home behind.
In hopes of something new, something exciting.
Something that felt real.

And I've seen views only imaginable painted in watercolour, animals pulled from the pages of a children's storybook.

But still there's a tiny hole,
a missing bolt in the workings of this adventure,
and it's taken me exactly 2192 hours to work it out.

Only now do I realise that;
getting rid of the baggage of home,
has really only clarified for me the one thing I want to hold on to.

I find comfort in the whisper of your voice, as your breathe softly awakens the hairs on the back of my neck.
Shelter in the warmth of your skin at 2am when the streets have fallen silent.

As your hand rests delicately on the skin below my chest the world around us slows and for a brief moment my mind is at home.

But once the door closes behind you it’s as though 10,000 stars are stolen from the sky and in that moment a dark shadow begins to dim the once glistening light.

As our movie draws to an end and the credits begin to roll,my eyes trace your silhouette in the dark where it once lay.
My breath leaves my body heavy now,as though I’m gasping for something I can no longer see, feel or touch.

It’s as if all of a sudden the roof over my head is torn away with a gust of reality
Realising that the shelter I felt was only temporary.

A stopover, an escape, just another passing moment.
Realising that it can never be mine to take because for someone else that warmth is more than just shelter, it is a home.

A warm, welcoming smile after a long day at work.
A safe embrace on days when tears begin their stream down the curve of her flushed cheek.

She’ll find comfort in the way you hold her hand, fingers intertwined like the roots of the most delicate flower.
Safety, in the way your arms pull her closer in the night, the warm skin of your chest gently pressing against her as she falls back; blissfully, into a dream.

A dream, that’s how our moments felt. The whole time I knew I had to wake up eventually, it was a ticking time bomb I’d tried so hard to disarm. Sometimes I thought that maybe,just maybe if I squeezed my eyes closed for a second longer, I’d get just one more moment with you.

One more of those mornings, eyes still heavy with sleep as you reach for my hand beneath the sheets.
One more aimless walk through the park, weaving through crowds of slow moving sun seekers, searching for colour in the dried up flower beds.

Maybe this time if I knew it would be the last, I could take it all in for just a few more seconds. Just a little longer so I could remember how it all felt. Every sweet hum of laughter, every vulnerable tear shed, every time you made me feel whole and human.

Funny thing about time is, those few more seconds are something of fiction. Only in fairytales and on the pages of children’s books does one more moment really exist.

So instead, I’ll write for you these words that you may never hear but I’ll try. I’ll fight bravely with my own mind in the battle to press send; because I need you to know, I have to tell you because some things cannot be left unsaid.

You made me feel at home within myself, at a time when I felt so far from any light, a time I had been wandering alone down the dark streets of my own thoughts and for that I will be forever grateful.