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(it’s all just a dream) As the poets like to say, I was born with half of my soul. Most people are, connected only by a thin, red string by our ankles. When people are eighteen, they follow that red trail, to find their other half. I have been following mine all my life. The end keeps stretching. (the ghost of your fingers over my skin) Everybody seems to find someone. I find no one. I date. We all do, those of us that don’t find the rest of our souls early on. Boys and girls, men and women. Freckled alabaster and smooth tan, kisses peppered in the dip of the collar bone. Yet the hollow only grows. (the remnants of you linger beyond my grasp) I dream. It’s a long dream, scattered over the years. I dream of dark brown eyes like rich soil, I dream of slender hands that fit perfectly on my hips, and I dream of lips that taste like sugar and torturous longing. I think I’m dreaming of my soul. But as they all like to say, it’s all just a dream… You don’t dream of your soul. You follow the thread. That is the only way. (it seems like you’re running just past the corner) A name grows on the tip of my tongue. But no matter how I try, I always seem to miss a few syllables. I’m always dreaming. It’s like I’m waltzing in an unending dream of my own creation. Yet the thread still does not stop. They still think I am in denial, still think this is my subconscious crying. It’s all just a dream, they like to say. Yet I always awake, cheeks pooled in tears, with the phantom feeling of your fingers through my hair and your warm skin pressed against mine. (embraces like wind, smiles like shadows) I remember a promise. Or I dream of one. There doesn’t seem to be a difference. Fingers interlock. There’s something vaguely romantic about that word, as if we are locking each other together, inseparable. Not unlike the red strings that connect us. Your whispering breath brushes against the skin of my ear. There’s a long river, white and silvery. There’s a pair of scissors, sharp and unforgiving. And there’s a scream. Something happens. I can’t remember what. That’s because it’s all just a dream, they say. I cannot remember what did not happen. (the breeze mocks me with a poor mimicry of your touch) The thread ended today. I see the red trail to a pitiful end. It’s broken and torn. (I hear your voice in the shifting ocean waves) I keep walking. I have lost something, I think, as I trod the direction of the thread. A cemetery grows around me, crumbling gravestones and wilting flowers framing my pathway. As the poets love to say, I’ve lost half of my soul. I think… The thought is too hard to name. I don’t. So I keep walking. Until I stop. And there is the red thread. It begins broken and torn. It ends underground, buried deep in soil covered by a blanket of grass. I fall to my knees, staring with growing forlorn at the old gravestone. There is the name I’ve been looking for. “Amelia.” It fits in my mouth perfectly, rolls off my tongue like I’ve been saying it all my life. And, perhaps, in a way, I have. I wonder, Amelia, what your favourite colour was. Did you love the crisp coldness of winter, or the warm breezes of summer? Did you look for me too, Amelia? Now I know her name, I can’t stop saying it. Amelia, Amelia, Amelia. How is it that you can lose something before you find it? My fingers hover over the engraved name. I suppose it was all just a dream, then. As I sit against the tombstone, I squeeze my eyes shut against the world, the stupidly bright sky and the sun that would not stop mocking me. You had brown eyes, Amelia. Or did you? I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t even know if souls are real. It’s lonely. I’ve lost something today and yet, curiously, I’ve also found something. (what beautiful lies I’ve been fed) The world ticks on without me. There is a profound difference between being alone and being lonely. Those that are alone are not necessarily lonely and those that are lonely do not always mean to be alone. I find myself to both: alone and lonely. How do you comprehend your soul to be a dream? How is the thing that has fuelled you with burning passion meant to be nothing but imagination? How can a red thread, so obviously real, possibly become fake? I don’t know. It seems I don’t know anything. Only the crumbling gravestone and the faded name carved upon it is real. Amelia. Or maybe even that is false. Maybe this is a dream too. Amelia. Are you a dream? |
