Reverie

Sleep is a reflection of reality: a world within one’s own mind, one’s own pleasures and pain, anger and sadness. A message in a bottle thrown out into a sea of consciousness, the delusion so thick it seeps through the mental cracks in one’s mind, melting, permanently binding together feelings from endless days into the drift of nocturne.

My Reverie, my daydream, my momentary bliss, the color and feeling of sun bathing in a patch of sunshine, or a book read on the beach on a summer’s eve. The wind blowing in your hair, your effervescent smile, the light in your eyes seem to glow like fireworks. You are my nightingale: I only hear your call in sentient twilight, when my head hits the pillow but before my eyes succumb to the endless drone of fatigue.

“What is a dream?” You ask one night.

I sigh, my mind hazy and heavy with the odes of a lullaby.

“Almost like the rainbow film on a soap sud: a reflection of light that’s fleeting and ultimately faded.”

You smile, shifting your weight towards me. “I suppose, like soap suds, dreams can escape too.”

I give a weak smirk. “You would know best. It’s your namesake.” I close my eyes for what feels like a second–I can’t shut them for too long, else I will be whisked away to my own slumberland. 

Your voice calls me back to the waking world.

“Just because it’s my name does not mean that I understand it.”

I crack a sapphire blue eye open.

“Very true. But my question is, what soap suds have you used? Did they master the mechanisms of flight before the Wright brothers?”

You laugh. It’s music to my ears.

“The ones in the shower–when you squeeze the soap bottle too hard.” You glide your fingers down one by one in the air. “They float above where you can see them, and all you can do is wait for them to pop.” 

“Like waiting to wake from a perfect dream.” I lean towards her, propping my head up with my arm. “I used to fall asleep in the shower as a baby.”

“Really?”

I nod. “My mother would place me on her shoulder and let the warm water run over me. Some places offer rooms where you can sit in a tub of water that’s nearly the same temperature as your body. It’s a disconnecting experience: you can’t tell yourself from the water.”

Your face sours, your chin receding while your eyes squint.

“I don’t think I’d like that.”

“I wouldn’t either.” I look up at you, my Reverie. “But for some, it’s a way of maintaining control by having none: you just…exist.”

You come in close, your silk nightgown smelling of jasmine. 

“So,” you begin. “Is that what you define as a dream?”

“An escapist fantasy?” Perhaps. “Some dreams are a reflection of a day’s experiences. Sleep is a way of emotional processing. So is it really escapism if real life can infiltrate them?”

You tilt your head, the raven ringlets bouncing off your shoulder.

“I suppose so.” You lean back. “One’s mind still leads those memories down twists and turns. It stretches them out in meaningless directions, like a silly putty.”

“Glue is unrecognizable from the bones that it rose from, yet Elmer still places a cow on their label.” I look up at you with tired eyes. You gaze back with a soft smile.

“Would you want to recognize that you’re in a dream?” You gently take a strand of hair between your two index fingers, curling it upwards as if it lacked curves in the first place.

“I know the signs.” I stifle a yawn. “Chemistry is kicking my ass right now. I think I’d like to put it off for some time if I was in one.”

“You want to be oblivious.”

I shrug, feeling how warm my silk pillowcase has become.

“Sometimes, it’s better to be ignorant than to be aware. I’m already stressed as it is. A little distraction is something I welcome with open arms.”

“Of course,” you say, leaning forward on your hands and knees, pressing your nose into mine. “I always seem to rudely interrupt.”

Your eyes are silver in the moonlight.

I smile, letting my eyes close for the first time since the beginning of our conversation.

“I don’t mind.”

You slowly sink into my arms in a warm embrace as the sound of your breathing slows. How lucky I am to have you, I think, my hands finding their way through your beautiful curls. My Reverie, my daydream, my momentary bliss.

I crack open one eye for a final time to peer at my digital alarm clock on my bedside table. The numbers, to my confusion, look warped and alien to my sleep deprived mind. One eye becomes two, as they squint and widen.

You can’t tell time in your dreams.