What A Dream

            What a dream I had:
 
            The fog like black smoke. The streets gray and pale, thick with snow. The crunch of my footsteps echoing off into the night. The stars blazing above the fog.
            And a girl. A pretty girl. A quiet girl. A sad girl.
            She walked with me, next to me. Our hands didn’t touch. Our eyes didn’t meet.
            There wasn’t a sound. Just the crunch of my feet on the snow. There wasn’t a word. Not a breath. Not a footstep other than my own. Even the girl just seemed to float along.
            We came to a small church and we stopped. I released a long, icy breath into the fog, parting it as if it were my own Red Sea. And in the breath I saw her eyes- misty and white.
            I reached for them, but felt nothing. I reached to dry the welling tears, but could not. And it wasn’t because she wasn’t there.
            It was because I wasn’t.
            The fog stayed parted for a long time- for forever really. And when it was over, when forever came to its close, I pulled my hand softly away. A feeling came then.
            She bore a hole into me with her stare- blatant and benevolent. And I couldn’t stand it. That feeling.
            And I knew who she was, and who I was. And I knew where we were. And I knew it wasn’t real. And I knew I would awake. And I knew why.
 
            And I did awake. I awoke in the same room as always, the same bed. I awoke on the second floor, in the third room on the right. I opened my eyes to the same electric chimes issuing from the same alarm clock that woke me the previous day, and the day before that.
            The same family. The same mother and father. The same older brother. The same younger sister. The same life.
            The same death. The same older sister. The one who was gone. The one who had been gone. The one who wasn’t coming back. The one I can’t seem to say goodbye to.
            The one I miss. The one I think about. The one I dream about.
 
            What a dream I had. What a dream. Only a dream.

A guy