oh darling boy

I have been dreaming, sort of

In a dream, you watch your lover push your head down underwater. You’ve never been happier. This dream pleases you so much it lingers in your head like a scent all day. At lunch, you corner yourself early so you can finally think about it with no interruptions. There is, of course, the strange question of what it meant somewhere in the back of your mind. But you don’t want to concern yourself with all that. The lover in question wasn’t cruel in the obvious sense, though he did call you a bitch during some argument. But you were both angry, and he regretted it almost as soon as the words escaped him. So it doesn’t even matter, you know. Plus, didn’t you use it against him in countless arguments later on? You love having scars so much you almost want people to hurt you. Isn’t that what he had said? Moral superiority is dearer to you than anyone has ever been. He did make love to you that night, though, gentler than he had ever been. You think it’s unfair. They kiss your wounds so gently, then hate you for wanting them. Oh, but the lunch break is only fifteen minutes long, and you’ve already spent three thinking about the lover—which, frankly, is more than what he deserves. Not wanting to waste away the time you have left, you start thinking about the dream again.

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Two drinks in, she admits she wanted you to have a different story. Fine, you’ll give her a new one then. You will paint the rooms brighter, turn the lights down, make the characters sorrier. If that is what she wants, you will give it to her. A couple is kindest to each other a day before the divorce. You want to tell her you’re sorry, but you don’t know that yet. You can only make sense of your feelings after the thing has happened. Right now, you are clueless. Her face is wet from the rain, and you’ve never found her more beautiful. In two days, you’ll be standing in front of the fridge with the door open. The cold air will chill your spine, but you’ll crave it. You will have opened and closed the door so many times you’ll catch the exact moment the light turns off. And then it’ll come to you—the moment it went wrong. You are so vulgar with your emotions it disgusts people. Including you, but only in past tense. The first time you met her, you read her your stories. They say the first week of every love affair reveals its end.

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You are driving down the highway on a bright August morning, and the radio is playing your favourite song. Someone else is singing along. You look back to find a child in the backseat. Dark hair, brown eyes, red shirt. But what is he doing in your car? He calls you mom, and you don’t want to be a mom. What do you do now? You push your foot down on the accelerator. You watch him shrink into the seat. He tells you he is sick and dying. You release the accelerator. You are not his mom, but you don’t want him to die. Your favourite song ends, and another you don’t particularly like fills up the air, but you don’t rush to change it. You miss your mom. You were driving then too, and she was sick and dying in the backseat. The silver moonlight haemorrhaged on your dashboard. You shouldn’t have thought about the funeral then. At the funeral, everyone was saying the right things, and it was driving you mad. But you couldn’t push your fist into their chests, so you sat there, unmothered and confused. The boy in your backseat is also sitting there, unmothered and confused. Kiss his face. Someone has to.

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