While the sun sleeps, darkness floods each corner of my bedroom. My eyes are open but I see very little. While the sun sleeps, I struggle to. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, my skin is warm and clammy and my body periodically twists into new shapes with a whimper. I pull up my nightshirt and feel from my stomach, to my chest and across to my hips. I squeeze. In part, for comfort and in part, to check that I’m still alive. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, my mind is free to roam in a way that I cannot control as easily as I can in the light. I try to catch my thoughts as they escape but they slip through my fingers. I give in. I let go of the sides. I begin to swim.
I see orange light dip and bounce off of a familiar street, interrupted by the shadows of teeny Brooklyn birds that accompany me as I walk. In front of me, yellow-cased traffic lights switch from red to green, from pause to walk, from breathe to go. I hear New York accents, I pass brownstone houses, I feel falling blossom, I step forward with lightness. I wander into a coffee shop and enter into a dance of colloquialisms before I get given the wrong coffee order. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, I am bathing in memories that feel visceral and hypnotising. I am seduced by nostalgia: hook, line, and sinker.
You walk in. The body in my bed jolts, turning over in an attempt to reverse your intrusion. You walk in. I shake my head, face down, in protest. You walk in. I knew that you would come. I have shut you out so well in the day that the only way you could reach me was here, walls down, in the dead of the night. I allow myself to look at you, knowing that one moment of weakness will lose me to the rest of the night. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, I wonder where these two versions of ourselves disappeared to and I wonder if we’ll ever be them again. I give in. I let go of the sides. I begin to swim.
Remembering you is a tonic. The glint of your glasses, the coils of your hair, the curves that frame your mouth. I see us sitting opposite on bar stools, fighting back tears as we gush about times that Laura Marling provided a soundtrack to our emotions. She was the perfect front to blame our glazed eyes upon but we both knew that our softness that night was evoked by the unexpected turn of being seen by a stranger. I watch us gravitate towards each other in busy rooms, explore each other with intimate questions, outlast party end times and make excuses to walk home together. The confusion that I once felt comes to lie next to me, wrapping itself around my back with a heaviness that I cannot ignore. I see us sit, a little too close, in yet another bar, and address the dynamic that has pulled us powerlessly out with the tide of late. I don’t know what to tell you, I say, but there’s not a minute that I don’t think about being next to you.
At some point, our arms link as tightly as our hearts and there is no going back. At some point, we kiss on my balcony and willingly give ourselves over to a friendship ruined forever. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, every moment is as real as the feeling of your forehead against mine, as your fingers in my hair, as your hands on my back. The recollections increase in vivid colours and visions that expose the tip of buried feelings. I want to call you, beckoning you to revisit the past with me. I want to call you, asking you to validate that what I remember really did happen to us. I hold my phone, I stare at your name and I hover.
Right on cue, the disappointment of our lives apart joins me in bed and I sink deeply back into the present. I was not asleep, but I was dreaming. In my fever dream, sentimentality swells and eclipses the cold breeze of actuality. It stings a little and rouses me out of romance. Ceasing fire is a position that I rarely opt for but here, without you, I don’t have the faith to fight for the connection. I catch my thoughts as they escape in the palm of my hands. I don’t give in. I reach back for the sides. I pull myself out from the water.
While the sun sleeps, darkness floods each corner of my bedroom. My eyes are open but I see very little. While the sun sleeps, I struggle to. I am not asleep, but I am dreaming. In my fever dream, my skin is warm and clammy and my body continues to twist into new shapes with a whimper until you have faded completely and the morning finally comes.