To the Dreamer I Once Knew

 I hope you’re happy.

I still remember when we first met, you know. We were both so young back then. Do you remember? That house was tiny, really, but it felt so big, like a whole world. That first time, it was raining, raining in June. You’d just finished your first year of middle school. The Summer months stretched long and lazy ahead of us, the exciting mundanity of temporary freedom.

The rain had put paid to talk of a picnic, a disappointment not easily recovered from. You were playing a telephone game with your sister, when I walked in the door with your dad. He knew my parents, and had brought me to play with his children. When we were introduced, you were entranced, and I, enamoured. We were always together after that.

We went to school, played in the shade during recess. You told every teacher about me until they gritted their teeth. Sometimes we were encouraged, but more often than not we were ignored.

I miss that house, with the wood panelling and the short-mown lawn. I miss the schools we attended together, the high school where you had your first kiss, the university where you took a creative writing course. We were closest then, in that universe of learning.

Now this room is the world, with its flaking yellow paint and wilting buttercups in a little vase. I’m wilting with them, flaking with the paint. I watch the door, hoping you’ll visit, but you never do. If I had a window, maybe I could watch you. Then again, how often would you be passing by? It’s not like there’s anything else for me to see.

Maybe you think I’ll be okay in here alone, as if I can live without you. I know you, you’ll justify it, you’ll say, “it’s fine, I can always try tomorrow. Besides, I’ve got so much work to do.”

I would agree with you, but there’s only so many tomorrows left.

I had a dream not so long ago. If you were here, I’d tell you all about it. Since you aren’t, I’ll tell it to the walls you put me in, to the paper of my soul.

I was big and strong and rooted in rich soil, a great green oak spearing the starry night sky. My branches brushed moon-dust, my roots wrapped ‘round diamonds in the deep. I was a tree, and I was your home. You were living in me, you’d made of me a house. You carved rooms through my trunk and hung your happiness from my boughs. We lived and grew, you in me and I with you.

Time passed, and we aged, but never did we falter, never did we part. You wrote your tales and I kept the thunder from shaking your hand.

You died in me. I was left utterly hollow, but you’d filled me with your memory, and everyone that passed saw in me a monument to you. All took little pieces of me for inspiration, and more trees sprouted. A forest rose, and it was all us everywhere.

I woke up when you did. You rolled out of bed and left me here, work calling you away.

If only you hadn’t taken that job. I think I knew I was going to die when that happened. You didn’t want to do it. We both knew it would be grey, boring, lifeless. We also knew that you needed the money. It was your dad that convinced you, funnily enough.

“You can’t fill your belly with fantasies,” he said.

I guess he’s right, but I don’t want him to be. It’s strange to think that the man who introduced us would also break us apart.

Y’know, it’s funny that we never talked about this, when you were here. You didn’t notice, and I didn’t want to trouble you. I never said that I was clever. If you were here, now, I’d tell you:

I’m dying.

There’s so much I should have said. I should have told you to turn down the job, I should have asked you to run away with me, I should have taken your hand and made you leave.

Then again, you should have offered.

Maybe I’m too harsh on myself, taking all the weight of this blame, this guilt. Who has all the power here, really? Me, dying in a tiny room, forgotten and alone? You hate what you’re doing, you’re bored and depressed, but it’s my fault for being out of reach. You never even tried to come along with me, to see if it would work.

They say it’s never too late, but I’m beginning to feel like it is.

I remember when you started. You’d stay out late, working those lingering hours, and I’d wait for you to visit. I was still in your life then, still a part of your future. You promised me, again and again, that it would be over soon, that you’d have enough, that you’d quit and we’d run. Every time you said it, we believed you less and less.

You had energy then, the vigour of a youthful spirit. Your eyes were as bright as your smile, and you shared both eagerly. Where, then, did those shadows come from, that sooty grimace? When did your eyelids become grim hoods of skin? How could you let the grey sap your senses away? Why is your back so crooked and curled? Who is this person you’ve become?

You won’t answer me, but that’s okay. I know that you can’t. Deep down, you’re asking yourself the same questions. Not that it matters. A honey trap holds you, the stickiest of all sweetnesses: comfort. Every day is the same, you wake, you work, you eat, you sleep. I waste away in my yellowing casket, and you forget to even think of me.

Comfort has poisoned you. It has devoured your spirit, gulped down your energy, put a tap to your strength, and shriven away your lustre. Yet, still it wants more. From what I’ve seen of you, more it will have.

I would save you, but I’ve not even the strength to stand. Your comfort has robbed me, too.

I did have hope, that one summer. You had saved up all your vacation days, at last to spend them. A whole month! It was like being a child again. You remembered me, and came to see me. I was weak and wan, but still hopeful. We went for a ride together.

There wasn’t much rain that year. The cornfields had grown, but the plants were too dry. I can still see the fields of gold and beige, stretching out to the blue horizon. That bike was a boat, in an ocean of drought. You were so close to being happy. A little smile teased the corners of your mouth, and your eyes twinkled amidst the crow-footed wrinkles.

Of course, it had to come to an end. Full of hope as I was, happy as you nearly felt, of course it couldn’t last. A month is just a handful of days, in the end. Days like any other, whether at work or in the vast crop-sea. So you went home, and I stayed in the cornfields for a while. It was nice there. Nothing but the wind, the sky and the stalks. I think that’s where you should have left me. It was a peaceful place to die.

But you did pick me up eventually. You rushed back and put me on life support. The year following that trip was probably the hardest time of my meagre existence. You were back at work, but you still toyed around with me, said you still wanted me, said that this time, this time, it was for real. I think the trip rattled you around, because it was uncomfortable. It had been too hot, too hard, too uncertain. Comfort only kills you if you let it.

I was still dying, but your scraps of attention just barely kept me going. It was like being trapped in the desert with a rain-cloud floating overhead. When you rained your notice down, I had the briefest relief. But it was never enough to nourish me back to health. Just like the cloud, eventually your attention would dry up. I could scream at the sun, but I’d only waste moisture.

You did come back a few times, and for some of those, I wished you hadn’t. You burst into my room one night, disturbing my gentle rotting. You were drunk, and unhappy, and you screamed like an animal. Our conversation was incoherent. You begged for forgiveness, but not from me. You wanted someone to absolve you of the sin of never being who you wanted. Why you had to do this in my wasting chamber, I don’t know.

I forgive you, for all that it matters. What choice do I have?

If chastising you would save my life, if tormenting you would restore my ailing self, then I would still forgive you. I love you, in the way that only I can.

You told me you hated me once. It was in your car on the way to work. Traffic had slowed to snail molasses, and you said, quite coldly, that you hated me. I think vitriol would have been less hurtful. It was so bland, so matter-of-fact. You said it as if it were obvious, as if it should already have occurred to me. Passionate spite was at least warm.

I would die a thousand deaths, suffer a thousand hells, before I would hear you say it again. You didn’t love me any more, and I wasted ever faster away. If you held me up to the light, you’d see right through me. Not that you’d hold me.

Fear was something of a companion for both of us in those days. Fear of forgetting, of losing each other completely. It was odd, I suppose. Even in your frigid despite, you never really wanted to get rid of me. Do you think that that’s why I’m still here?

Eventually you did forget me, or so I thought. Even fear abandoned me then. I was truly alone for the first time. As it turned out, you hadn’t fully forgotten me yet.

The last time I saw you, you opened the door gently. Timidly, like it was a first date. You came close, standing and staring. That day, you’d found your father’s old books, and remembered me. The day we’d met had surged to the surface, and you’d come to see me. There was a pen in your hand, ink staining your fingers.

You were so old; grey and paper-skinned. Not the old age of the body, but of the soul. I’d never seen you so weary. Still you flirted with me, let the spectre of that old smile play on your tired lips. I think we both knew what was coming. It was over, as much as we might not want it to be.

If there’s a place after this ever-shrinking room, then I think I’ll remember what you said forever. You turned to look at me, one last time, and your smile turned wry.

I never was all that good, you said.

I haven’t seen you since. I don’t want to let hope die, but perhaps it’s time to bury it. Perhaps all I’ve been cradling is a corpse. I’m almost gone myself, at that.

So, I suppose this is farewell. Maybe you’ll look in again, and find this decaying dormitory empty. I won’t be here, but perhaps the flowers will be. Wilted, rotten, buttercups, a reminder of childhood nothings and sweet promises whispered in the heights of fantasy. I have, do, and always will love you.

I hope you find this note.

I hope you find your happiness.

I hope you remember your hope, that you think of me sometimes.

Probably not though. I’m better off forgotten.

After all, I was just a dream.