Past midnight

– Are you asleep?
— No.
– Mm.
Pause
– What’s keeping you up?
— Nothing.
Pause
— You.
– I’m keeping you up?
— I want to be up. And awake, with you.
– Doesn’t the medication make you sleepy?
— Yes.
Pause
– So you haven’t slept at all?
— No.
– Joe…
— It’s alright.
Movement in the dark
— It’s alright.
Caresses
Lips touching skin
Exhale
Stillness
– You know we’re all in someone else’s dream.
— Mm?
– It makes the idea of a god less infeasible.
— What do you mean?
– You just need to stop thinking of it as an all powerful deity, and instead just a dreamer – dreaming of us, while itself within someone else’s dream.
— God as a dreamer. I like that.
– I wonder who dreams him, or her.
— Maybe it’s circular, a circle of dreamers all dreaming each-other.
– Or cross-connected, paradoxically within each-other’s dreams.
Movement
A single kiss on skin
Lips pressed, then released
— You have such beautiful thoughts Joe.
– Mm.
— Is this what you think about when you don’t sleep?
– Sometimes.
— What else do you think about?
– You.