softness and sophistry
“There’s something between us, in this place, that will stay with us our entire lives,” she said to me, quietly, as she rested her cheek in my palm.
* * * * *
How does one truly distinguish between the words of a friend, or a lover - and the words they speak to us in our dreams? How is it that my being awake or being asleep have any bearing on the honesty of what they say to me?
I would never put words in their mouths, these precious souls I care so dearly for. I would never ask for care, for respect, or for love from them if they wouldn’t give it freely - and even the most vicious loneliness would not inspire me to want for it.
And yet, I hear their voices in my dreams. I hear their words, phrased as they would phrase them. I feel their care or their caress, just as they would deliver these graces upon me.
I woke up with a kiss on my lips that I haven’t felt for years, from someone in my past that just never could be, and it was no different from the last time I saw her. Am I haunted, or haunting? - and either way, would I refuse this possession, regardless of who instigated it?
I still wake up to those cloudy, over-bright and waterlogged days of endless rain, and find myself asking more of these crystal clear memories I have of you. These generous visions of soft light enviously dancing over and admiring your still softer skin.
Every day of casual breath and beleaguerment spoils these memories of mine. They cheapen by association the vibrancy of my life, and erode my heart like the very worst of cancers.
~ Driz
I don’t think it’s really a haunting or even that you’re manipulating the emotion in any way. You said it centers around someone from your past and something that couldn’t be… So maybe your dreams are the only place you allow yourself to forget that part. Maybe that’s when your defenses are down and you actually feel the memories.
But that’s just me, so don’t let me offend you. I’m usually clueless.
No disclaimers - if you’re inspired enough to comment, you can’t offend, and you’re not clueless.
I wonder if perhaps I didn’t express this correctly, however. Or rather, if I didn’t end up expressing something different altogether.
The experience did feel very much like a sort of haunting, like a cooperative dream we maybe both had at the same time today. Everything that happened was so in character and ‘correct’, as we understand the people we believe we understand.
Dreams tend to be surreal in that they resemble a spinoff of life, similar characters show up but they’re utilized, controlled.
This felt like a memory, like all my memories do: vivid, clear, precise, exact, and altogether as finite as a memory might ever be. But this was a memory of something that didn’t happen - just something that most definitely could have happened.
Forgetting is not in my design, nor would I want it to be.
I suppose my concern is that as real as it felt, I was still just playing fantasy. If you truly understand carpentry, you can look at a tree and see a cabinet. I worry that because I truly understand my loves and lovers, I look at a real possibility and see a reality that isn’t (yet) there.
Does that make any sense?
~ Driz
I read your comment and then went back and re-read your post, and now I understand what you were saying. So now I have to totally change my mind. I’ve been there before, and it absolutely feels like a haunting.