Sleep State

In my dream, we are holding each other.

I emerge in the early morning hours, sweating through my bedsheets, desperate to return. Softened light bleeds through the window curtains, iridescence collects on the walls. This sleep state has betrayed me again, estrangement expands my ribcage and turns me in. My mind clings to sensation—slowly, I return.

In our otherworldly interior, you and I embody absent forms where we can kiss and touch and lie awake in the same bed, breathing. Your eyes slow-blink before settling, lids pressed and resting over each iris. Your breath catches in your throat, then your chest, pooling in warmth at your center. Those arms, that are not really your arms, lay weighted around me. I am caught somewhere within you, counting your breaths, inhaling whenever you do.

I am pulled into the scar across your collarbone, the pink flush that spills over your face. The water beads collecting above your cupid’s bow, your eyelashes fanned over your skin. I’m not sure what to do with my arms, that are not really my arms. I want to be rid of these corporeal attachments entirely—to be rid of my body, to dance within your bloodstream and flit about your pulses.

It is as real as any waking occurrence, beyond body limits and my echoing mind. This falling inward, this closeness. Your scent and your softness, our deepening thread of unavailing attachment. Here, we have found each other differently, and I am realizing it is all I’ve ever wanted.