cracks

I hadn't thought of you for years when I started having these dreams, like little glimpses into a timeline where I hadn't disappeared, where I'd go to parties and meet your friends and laugh and have a good time and when I finally went home I didn't feel exhausted or anxious or broken. I just felt alive. Like a person. Every morning I wake up and feel so much worse than I can describe, because that's not me. But the person in the dreams--it wasn't watching someone else, like so many of my dreams. It was me.

I didn't realize they were about you at first. Of course on some level you've always been there, haven't you? But as the dreams kept coming, and I'd wake with that strangely empty wistfulness, I could just make out your shape as my mind tried to piece together what had happened (and what hadn't). And then, finally, last night, you were there in the flesh. So to speak.

This one was different. It had been years, just like the real world, but you called. You were in town, you wanted to meet. So we met at a place which could have been anywhere, and I cannot tell you how happy I was. I should never have run away.

Then time passed, as it does in dreams, and I started to see the cracks. There were reasons I disappeared, reasons you never looked for me. We can forgive, perhaps, but neither of us were ever very good at forgetting.

When the morning came I was unsure if I wanted to wake up or stay asleep. Fortunately, I suppose, the real world rarely offers us a choice, and even rarer still offers us a chance to do things over again.

I hope you're well. I've lost so much since we last spoke.