Last night I had a dream. I was jogging down a road so familiar in fantasy, but so obscure in real life. He was jogging too. Not near me, of course, but I could tell he was following way behind, and I knew he wanted to reach me. I didn’t think about it, I just knew I didn’t want to see him for real, so I kept on going. I got to the city, still going, until I came to a house by a tunnel. I went inside and stayed there waiting. I knew he would find me and I waited. When he came he asked me why I was running from him and I spoke what I knew by heart. “Because I know what will happen,” I said with as much pain I could manage. He simply smiled and told me “no one will know what will happen, and we can change any danger sign ahead of us if we believe so.” I couldn’t help thinking about seeing him in the light instead of just hearing his voice, so I went outside and got ready to run. Before I could move, he stopped me, took my hand, and looked at me. I was terrified, not of him, but of the thought of seeing him for the first time. I pulled his hand out of mine and held it in my two, and then I turned ever so slowly to face him. I could only stare in amazement. He had every feature I have ever sequenced in my thoughts of every moment I have stopped to wonder. It was a beautiful trick, it had to be. For if this was real it wouldn’t be me, I am not as lucky as most. As if he read my thoughts, he smiled and told me I don’t need luck to have love, and, for once, I smiled back. It was a feeling I have never felt before; happiness. Then I stopped, and I remembered. I did feel this happiness before, and it felt real last time. Every waking moment I was floating on my own cloud up in heaven, but that, that was a trick. A dirty little lie, and even when I was warned about him I refused to believe it. All I believed in was what I had found in love. But…he lied, he cheated, he accepted penalty, and he broke my heart. All I got from him was the scars I still have to this day, and I’m still scared of his words.
So quiet and softly I drew a breath and held it in. I wanted to believe that if I held it long enough I would wake up from this crazy dream. Then I realized I still had his hand in mine, and so I opened my eyes and breathed out. I said to him: “I have been broken in every place imaginable once before, so don’t deceive me if you are only going to break me once again.” This time he grasped my arm tightly and looked me straight in the eyes and said: “If the world ended tomorrow, I’d kill myself today, just in case it was heavens decree you were to die first. The same with your answer, if we were to end tomorrow I would kill myself today.” I cried, and I don’t understand why, it was only natural. “How are you to know what shall happen in the future?” I sobbed. He said what could only come from a dream, “I am not dead yet, am I?” I froze not one word escaping my lips, and looked up to him. He was serious. Now I am too. Of course he had read my mind again, and we kissed, better than reality, even if this is.
Without another spoken word we both jogged through the tunnel, both hoping it will take us someplace new. Somewhere unnatural for the real and fake halves of this world to matter.
We never stopped moving.