Dream I We are underneath a treehouse. He pulls the cord to raise the platform on which we stand and I splinter my hands gripping cedar as we swing against gravity stomach lurching in the heights. He chortles as I beg to be let down again.
Dream II We are in bed, yet I feel lonelier than if he were a million miles away, or under another's sheets and I grimace as he tells me not to speak - that my voice annoys him even when my whispers, my caresses are merely my love incarnate.
Dream III We are in a bar without walls. He smiles, dances on the bar top backlit by a blue mirror and bottles with a dark-haired wisp of a girl in white and she isn't me. No, I was unexpected. I say hello and his smile disappears. This observation spears my guts, as he pretends not to hear. I order a drink and pretend I never tried.
Dream IV He leaps and gestures and goads, poking fun and inspiring deepest belly laughs and I should be blissful but he flits from table to table always passing mine. Saving his jokes and witticisms though I can think of a billion replies better than everyone else's. I turn to our mutual friend who shrugs and lets it slide saying this happens all the time. Apparently, I am an audience now considered too cheap to buy.
I Wake...*
The television flickers. His heads lolls onto my shoulder and his longshank of a leg twitches. I want to weep or *****, so I move and his arm tightens around me. I want to shake him, when his lips that are even softer, pinker than mine uplift at the edge, and part to whisper, "Stay."
Each night I fear I have lost him forever and each day I wake to find he loves me still.
What will it take to convince me in the dark of what I, in the daylight, know by heart?
I've been plagued by these dreams - I wonder if the only way to banish them is to write about them and remove their power.