I Don't Blink In Dreams

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if you hadn’t absconded.

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if you reappeared, magic, poof, a solid reality instead of the ephemeral set of memories I live with every day.

I dreamt about you. Recently. Not last night, not the night before that. Last week, maybe. I don’t remember, precisely. My memory was never good when it came to you. You were always about the moment. I was always in the moment with you, and time and detail ceased to matter. Who needs linear abstraction when there is so much else to pay attention to, so much that is real to feel? Who knows how long a second can be? I know that it can be an eternity. The second between the inhale and the exhale can be eternity. Who needs to remember the paintings in the Tate when I can say that every busker in London played “Wonderwall” whenever we walked by?

We looked at the paintings anyway. We sat through a lecture in the National Gallery. And when the dry woman with the dead-leaf voice was done telling us things we already knew about Adam and Eve and Eve in art and the place of the feminine in Christian-sponsored art, we escaped from the auditorium like children let out for recess and we skipped down the hallway giggling like mad things and we played hide-and-seek among the soldiers of the Terracotta Army until a burly, black-jacketed docent asked us to leave in politely threatening tones.

We knew the secret to removing ourselves from the ordered world, you and I.

But I dreamt you, recently. I dreamt you to my door and into my bedroom. We stood face to face, and I put the tips of my fingers on the sharp protrusion of your cheekbone. My right hand, your left cheek. Just so. Just the way we stood when you picked me up at Heathrow, that time you were late and I called and called and there was no answer and I worried and thought about taking a cab but didn’t know where to take it.

Remember?

You finally appeared. You were apologetic, profusely, abundantly apologetic.The tumble of words from your lips was torrential, neverending. I put my finger tips on your cheek. I didn’t trust myself to touch your lips; I didn’t trust you to have my skin against them. So I touched your cheekbone, instead.

You stopped talking.

We walked to your car together. You started talking again. We drove through the City center on the way to Rose Cottage; it was Sunday, it was late, there was no congestion charge. You played tour guide. I sat sideways, my back against the car door, my knees pulled up and my toes poking at the gear shifter. You put your hand on my ankle in between gears. You circled it completely in your hand, and I felt every callous and every training cut.

In my dream, you went to open up my skull, like you used to do, to swing it back on those ivory hinges you installed yourself, but I had changed the lock. Your key didn’t fit.

You laughed at me.

“Don’t you remember, love? I’m a thief. I’m a doorman. You can’t keep me out,” you said. Cocky cockney.

And you pulled out your kit, your picks and your wires, and you picked that bone lock on my forehead, right between my eyes. I watched you the whole time. I don’t blink, in dreams. I didn’t want to keep you out, you know. I changed the lock so that you’d have to touch me, take your time. I changed the lock to slow you down.

But then you’d done it, and my skull swung back on those ivory hinges you installed yourself, and your calloused fingers were in my brain, buried deep, all the way to the palm. I could feel the weight of your heavy hand on my frontal lobe, affecting my judgment.

The tips of your nails tickled my temporal lobe, and I remembered: living with you was like living in a dream. There was eternity in the space between inhaling and exhaling. I never blinked.

I have you in my dreams. I don’t need you in front of me anymore.