One night you are dreaming and a man appears. You’ve never seen him before yet he feels warm and familiar. He understands intuitively things you didn’t even know about yourself, things you didn’t know you had been wanting. The connection is base and physical but in its simplicity you feel a spiritual transcendence. It’s as if, for the first time, you have become more than yourself. By the next night you have almost managed to forget him - then he comes again. It’s a different dream entirely but exactly the same man and exactly the same feeling. 

As months pass you realize you can’t remember the last dream you had without him. You used to feel so lonely, even around other people, but now you’re sure that even if the dreams stopped you’d know you were never truly alone. You laugh to yourself, thinking you really have met the “man of your dreams.” He is more vivid than anything your mind has ever come up with before. The memory of him follows you into your daily life, in a breeze that carries the undertone of his scent or the timbre of a laugh on the subway. At first you assumed he was pure fantasy but every time you see someone who could almost be him, a cautious hope grows within you. It seems impossible that someone so visceral could have been created through imagination alone. Even then, all rationale fails completely to explain his consistency. Each night, without fail, he is with you. You talk about the universe, how everything is connected, how there is still so much we still don’t understand. In the dreams you are able to be your full self, knowing there is nothing about you he would ever run from, nor you from him. Still, he never manages to say anything that would help you identify him. 

You think that if you’ve ever believed in anything before he must be ten times more real and if you haven’t, now seems like the time to start. You begin researching into lucid dreaming and astral projection. There are so many things you would ask him if you could. What’s his name? Where does he live? And the question you are most afraid of: does he dream about you too? 

You try all sorts of things: herbal teas, meditation, psychics. Your old friends drift away slowly, one by one, each saying they love you but just don’t understand the person you’re becoming. New friends fill their places. You aren’t sure if you believe in tarot and astrology as much as they do but you feel safe with them. They understand what it’s like to know there’s something bigger out there. You never tell them about your dreams but they often say you have a far-off look in your eyes.

You try more investigative measures, looking through photographic databases, researching which cologne ingredients could be the closest to his smell. You know his face so well, you’re sure you could pick him out of a crowd in an instant, but nothing you try seems to get you any closer. Eventually you apply for a position that requires frequent travel and always allows you to get your full eight hours. When you call your mom to tell her you got the job she says she’ll miss you but that she’s so, so proud of you.

The day you see him you’re in an airport so far across the world you feel almost home again. He’s about to board a flight, separated from you by rows of vacationers and their carry-on bags. Panic rising in your chest stops you from calling out, what would you even say? Then he gives one final cursory glance behind him and then he is ducking under the divider, weaving through the crowd, his gaze never leaving yours, coming over to where you are standing with your whole life folded into a suitcase, feet stuck to the ground. He is kissing you and you realize your whole life has been one long dream you are finally waking up from.

On a bench between everywhere he says he knew you were real. You try to stop smiling when your mouth starts to ache but you can’t. He says he always looks for your picture in the news and chides you for not attempting to become more famous. You know it’s a joke but you feel intensely embarrassed anyways, like your organs are on the outside of your body. You can’t stop glancing at the nearby security guards, half expecting them to come over and take you away. There’s so much you have to talk about but you don’t think this is the place to do it, it’s so exposed. He understands. He says that he just abandoned his return ticket and goes to check the schedules. The next plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow so you get dinner at a fancy restaurant where he tells the waitress you’re coming home from your honeymoon. She brings out a bottle of champagne. You order coffee after coffee until the restaurant closes then you go to your terminal to wait. In the darkest corner you sit together, watching the airport empty of everyone, save the occasional weary traveller. When you’re both too tired to talk, he puts on his favourite movie but the subtitles are hard to read on a phone so you can’t really follow the plot. Eventually he falls asleep with his head on your shoulder and, for the first night in years, you are alone. 

You’re surprised on the flight the next morning when he says he dreamt of you. You ask what you said but he doesn’t remember it word for word. Then the flight attendant comes with drinks. You try to order a coffee. He asks if you think that’s a good idea. He’s worried about your lack of sleep and says you should try to take a nap. You thank the attendant and let the cart pass by. You don’t tell him you’re afraid, afraid things will feel different now. You curl up against the window, watching the sunlight set the clouds on fire as it rises. He asks if you want to close the blind.

 When you manage to get to sleep he’s there with you and your dream self doesn’t worry about the luggage getting lost or how your mother will feel about you moving to a different country. When you arrive at his apartment he takes you into the bedroom. He points to an antique dresser on the far wall, telling you to open it. The empty drawer squeaks but it’s still beautiful. He says he bought it for you last year. 

The following week you run out of clean clothes and text him to ask where the detergent is. He says he uses a laundry bar that’s under the sink. When you find it, the smell makes you feel like you’ve just asked him for the answer to a riddle you’ve been trying to solve for years. With a morbid curiosity you get his deodorant from the bedroom and put them next to each other, wondering if you could have bought his scent for $13.99 at the grocery store. You exhale, relieved that it’s not him - not everything, at least.

After the first month he’s tired and you’re restless. You begin to feel sick when you sit up in the morning and see that dresser. It’s the closest you can bring yourself to being sick of him. He suggests you take a vacation but you don’t see the point, knowing it will all still be here when you get back. You tell each other about your dreams. Sometimes he brings them up when you fight, your contradictions, your lies. You resent your dream self for giving away so much. You feel out of control. One night you say his dream self would never treat you like this but when you look into his eyes, full of painful earnestness, you know it must be the same person standing in front of you still.

He tells you he’s working late one night, as he often does, so you fall asleep in the queen bed by yourself. For the first time in a few weeks you dream of him again. When you wake he is beside you, petting your hair, tears dampening the sheets. He says he just wanted to feel something again but when it was over he fell asleep and knew it could never be the same with anyone else. You don’t feel sorry for him in that moment but you don’t feel sorry for yourself either. You go rock, paper, scissors for the spare room. At first you’re kept awake by his pacing along the creaky hallway late at night, then it fades into the sound of old pipes and wind in the trees. 

One day you ask to have a conversation about the future of your relationship. In it, he says that it’s easier not to miss you beside him in bed knowing you’ll be with him as soon as he falls asleep. It hurts but you can’t say you don’t feel the same. That afternoon you take a nap and he isn’t there. When you wake up there are groceries on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away. 

He doesn’t work late again. If there were particularly heated dreams you might wake up craving him and meet passionately at the door to the bedroom but each one is suspended, content and complete. Once, you creep into the hall anyways, hoping to manufacture a late night rendezvous, but all is still. You can’t even hear him snoring over the rustling of branches. 

The next morning you wake up to the smell of coffee. You tell him about your plan and how somehow you hoped he would sense your presence and wake up. He laughs. That day he gives you a wry smile then kisses you goodbye. You want to tell him that it wasn’t enough but the feeling drifts out the door with him, unsaid.

First written 26/04/2024