the aftermath

It’s unfair how we can only meet in dreams.

I thought it was enough at first. No hassles. No drama. No audience. No consequences. You’d come as I liked, leave as you may, and the thumbprint you left in the notch of my guts would disappear with you as I woke, oblivious to the fact that you were never there.

But I got greedy and hungry as the dreams grew clearer.

When they were no longer flashbacks or echoes of our real encounters imprinted in my hippocampus, my frontal lobe took charge and drove the re-rendered dream production straight to hell. Forbidden touches we never dared to receive. Unsaid words plastered on raw skin. Messy kisses etched on our lips and cheeks. Belated conversations rehearsed for the hundredth time.

And it was a different dream every time. With clear plot spines and detailed dialogues. And the hurt shapeshifted. Amplified. Embedded and weaved into the outline of the act, breaking me over and over again.

How can you haunt me so stunningly?

Reality slowly creeps in, then hits me like a wooden bat to the ribs as I wake up. In my head, I am on my knees, hurting, gasping, weeping, choking on my own aches as you once again turn away from my invisible hands, taking with you all the blazing affections I once vowed not to place into the wrong embrace.

Your love feels like some sort of violence, cutting me alive.

What was it that made you stick to me like peeled stickers melted over plastic water bottles? What was on your hands as they touched me so privately and sacredly; on your lips as they whispered me devotions and hidden trauma; in your words that portrayed wasted potential and ruined self-security? Tell me, do they see you like I do? Does she hold you the way I did? Did they stay like I still do? And do you still think of me every time you drive by my neighborhood?

I wake up screaming with storms in my eyes, never once settled since you left without a goodbye, knowing once again, I will be replaying the dream in my head, wishing it last just a little longer, or better yet, half of a lifetime.

I wish I can stop romanticizing nostalgia. I wish I can put an end to unfinished affairs.