I keep having this dream where my worst fear keeps coming to life but when I try to wake up I find my eyes are already open.
One day I looked around and realized I am sleeping with shadows and ghosts of people I loved. I loved them but they didn’t quite see the appeal in wrapping arms around intangible demons that I’ve been shouldering ever since the lights went out that time when I was 16. It’s been dark for most of the time since.
I’ve been finding flashlights and candles as I go, some burning brighter than others, but batteries and flames always die on me, much like the way these people have to me. I’ve been walking blind and I keep stubbing my toes but I can’t stop moving, I can’t stop because I’ve been afraid of what’s hiding in the dark for so long and a part of me refuses to accept that maybe I’m just trying to run from myself.
Instead of bread crumbs I’ve been leaving droplets and slivers of red iron that sink into the floorboards but I can’t see them anyway. I can’t find my way back, I don’t know how to find that bright trail I was on when I was 14. I was 14 and held the sunlight in my hands and then I was 15 and I was tripping over coal that embedded itself into my knees, and then I was 16 and I was in the dark.
When I was 17 I learned what it was like to have the darkness inside you, what it was like to desperately hope for some light to vanquish you, some kind of beacon that cut through the fog and left everything clean. When I was 18 I became a shadow myself and I’ve been flitting amongst a garden full of dead roses that whisper the names of the ghosts that crawl into bed with me, hoping that a hero would rise to exorcise me, lay me to rest.
At the age of 19 I started having the dream every day, every night. It used to come few and far between, but I became grey instead of pitch and now I’m tangible enough to hurt again. In this dream, my worst fear keeps coming to life, but when I try to wake up my eyes are already open and I am staring at the next ghost waiting to slip between my sheets. They smile softly at me, all rosy and alive and there, but when I blink they are wispy and walking through my bedroom door.
I keep having this dream where my worst fear keeps coming to life but when I try to wake up I find my eyes are already open. It's the kind of bitterness you hate yourself for, the kind that grinds itself into your bones and sours everything you taste. It's the kind of experiences that makes you wonder if history is not so much a timeline but a cycle that's got you in a chokehold. It’s the kind of disappointment that becomes second nature, the kind that always lingers like last night’s lover, always wanting one last taste. It's the kind of abandonment that leaves you feeling at home in condemned houses; something about them resonates within you, feels like family. It’s the kind of fear that leaves you with your heart racing. It’s the kind of dream where you’re afraid you are never ever going to be enough; it’s the kind of dream that you’ve been awake for and living all along.
