Every Dream is a Theft

Three months after the funeral, I started dreaming of him.

He was there, in the living room, wearing his sunglasses inside, his favorite ones with the blue-green chrome lenses that matched his neon sneakers, and a band tee that was just one size too small, though he would argue it was the perfect size or it shrank in the dryer.

“Take me down to the paradise city…”

He was singing and dancing like he would when I was a kid: his feet moving to one rhythm while his arms danced to another.

My chest ached with something between joy and sorrow.

For a moment, I let myself believe it was real.

“Dad?”

He didn’t turn right away, just kept singing loudly and out of key, as if he hadn’t heard me. So I tried again, louder this time.

“Dad!”

And he stopped.

He turned around and looked at me.

He smiled and laughed, a deep belly laugh that had him doubled over, tears spilling out from under his sunglasses.

He laughed so carefree and unrestrained as if he hadn’t been gone for months, leaving me behind with nothing but ashes in a jar and unresolved guilt for not calling him one last time to say how much I loved him. Or having been there to say goodbye, even after knowing he didn’t have much time left.

I wanted to run to him, to touch him, to hug him so tight he’d never slip away again. We would dance and belt out some ’80s ballad, just one more time. But before I could take a single step forward he vanished, leaving me alone, choking on all the unsaid words.

The sheets were tangled, binding me as I woke up in a cold sweat, tears pooling in my ears. The sound of his laugh still rang in the room, but it was fading too quickly, and then it was gone. Like it had never existed.

I tried to remember its timbre, its richness, its warmth. But it was like trying to catch steam in my hands.

The only sound was my own breathless, heart-ripping sobs that echoed off the walls and took residence there.

The dreams kept coming every night after that, and each time I awoke, I lost more of him.

First, it was his laugh. But soon after, it was his voice and that noise he would make when he was irritated or annoyed. The one I would mimic just to annoy him even more. Now I pursed my lips and pushed the sound through the back of my throat, but it was all wrong.

Then, the way he walked after his accident. The way he used to say my name when I came home late—half stern, half amused.

What was real and what was I imagining, to fill the gaps of where he no longer was?

That’s when it hit me—the thing that’s haunted me ever since: every dream is a theft.

The dreams aren’t visits.

They’re deletions.

So I stopped.

But it wasn’t easy.

I started chugging espresso by the pot. It’s in my mouth before it has had time to cool down; the scalding heat scorches my tongue and tears at my throat on its way down.

But, I don’t wince…it’s a bearable pain, compared to the ache of forgetting him.

Bitter grains stick to my teeth, leaving a perpetual taste of coffee. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t even know what I eat most days, but I do eat…I think.

The growing pile of dirty dishes confirms that someone is eating.

That isn’t enough, though.

Fatigue pulls down on my eyelids. It blurs my focus and sings sweetly in my ear when I sit or rest my head. Especially when I linger in the dark spaces of my heart too long.

So every switch is flipped. Light flooding every room. But the incandescent warmth hugs me and caresses my skin. Its softness irritates. They now lay smashed at the bottom of the bin.

Bright, piercing LEDs have usurped them. They push the shadows to the corners and cast a cool, blue tinge over everything. Like in the hospital ward he spent all of November in last year, or was it the year before that?

The TV is also always on. His old one—the giant with its rounded screen that bulges out.

Its black plastic casing has dulled with time, and the six rectangular buttons beneath the screen barely respond anymore unless you press them so hard they don’t pop back out.

I’ve tuned it to an unavailable channel. The static that hisses all night is a wall between me and silence because silence is where he hides now.

I hold myself tightly, fighting to sit still, but my body rebels against me in small ways.

“Shut up,” I whisper to myself between sobs that have escaped.

Why is the flesh so weak?

Eyes burning constantly, never wet enough, though I cry so often. My vision blurs as I stare at the screen flickering in shades of black and gray; sometimes there is more than one jumping back and forth before me.

My skin prickles with an irritation that feels like invisible needles digging into every pore and unraveling me.

And then there are my hands—traitorous things with their constant trembling; mugs, plates, photos slip from my grip breaking at my feet.

“Just say it already!” I shout in empty rooms that feel as though they are being watched.

Someone, something on the other side—expectant, mouth wide, words trapped in the throat, choking.

It’s him.

Is it him?

Then they start.

So faint that I've convinced myself it was my own mind.

I laugh at my own paranoia.

At night, floorboards shift and groan beneath phantom weight; murmurs snake through the air vents like secrets meant only for me.

Footsteps shuffle down the hallway, its gait familiar, a step and drag that I have heard before, but it vanishes into silence as soon as it gets to my door.

“Please, come back,” I begged every night while in his bed.

Pleas that are swallowed by the emptiness cradling me.

Then, clear as a bell and outside of me I heard him.

“Mija.”

Throwing the door open, it crashed against my racing heart.

"Dad?!” my voice cracked on the word, “Where are you?” I called out to the empty hallway stretching ahead of me.

The family photos sneered at me from their frames. They saw him, and they mocked me for not.

I strained my ears, pressing them to the wall. They whispered, too low to understand.

Tap-tap.

But it wasn’t from the walls.

A faint crackle from the TV, its static no longer random but deliberate, pulsing in a slow, rhythmic pattern.

Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

It was trying to say something to me.

Morse code.

Grabbing a pen and an old notebook, I crouched on the floor in front of the television. The static flickered faster with each tap. I scribbled furiously, translating dots and dashes into letters.

And then they stopped.

None of it formed a single coherent sentence. Not even one intelligible word, or at least no word I had ever seen before.

But I wasn’t discouraged, because I knew what it meant.

“It’s him,” I whispered to the watchful gaze with me in the empty room.

Tapping my finger on the screen, I sent a message back and waited.

The static was unchanged.

I pressed my mouth to the screen. I felt the electricity shock my lips as I whispered and then shouted my words through the glass.

An ofrenda is needed.

Remembering the words of the Curandera my mom took me to see as a child, the one who was going to tell her if he was cheating and with whom.

She did, and he was, but it didn’t matter. Not to my mother in the end, and now it was as if it never happened.

Who remembers the bad deeds of the dead?

Those who never forgave.

But my wounds have long scarred over.

It started small, the altar I was building for him.

His watch, the cheap white one he said matched everything. His old comb, which still held strands of silver and black in its teeth. The jersey of his favorite team, the one that lost more games than it won.

Then I added the photo of us on my first birthday, where he was so young, so happy, so alive.

And some of his ashes from the urn.

I lit his candles every night. I talked to him. I read the Morse code aloud. Sometimes he answered, I think.

No, I know he answers. In ways, he knows only I will understand.

The air gets heavy and the walls groan. A photo of him will fall. The room gets cold and I feel it press down on my chest.

One night as I listened for him, the bedroom door opened on its own, and I saw his chair move.

It tilted back and forth, rocking like he used to when his sick and frail body ached from sitting too long. Right before, he would ask me to help him stand, and then we’d watch a movie together. Something with Liam Neeson.

Nothing played on that TV anymore; I’d thrown a cover over it, not wanting to see even my own reflection in it.

It was a face I hardly recognized now anyway.

I’d covered every window, too. Sunlight felt intrusive; it reminded me of passing time. Of how quickly I’ve moved away from the day he last smiled at me.

What was out there that was more important?

But the world must step in, must exert its will on those who want to be alone.

I stopped answering calls and texts. They would all understand, I told myself.

Not Ellen. The sky bled red and orange behind her as she barged through the front door, unannounced.

She had used the emergency key that was hidden in a planter outside. But this wasn't an emergency.

In her hands, she gripped the pouches of chamomile tea and lavender oil.

It stung my nose.

“Jesus, there you are!” she dropped the items on the couch and rushed at me, crushing me between her arms.

“I thought something happened to you. Why haven’t you been answering?” She immediately demanded, the previous concern now replaced with indignation at having been ignored.

“You look awful.” She added with a furrowed brow as she pulled away and stared at my eyes.

Bile churned in my stomach as I stared back at her. Skin dewy, cheeks blushed, eyes glossy and bright.

Her face was wicked, as it hung in expectation, waiting for a response.

My eyes were screaming at her, she must have seen. They yelled at her. That her voice screeched and bounced off the walls, echoing through every room. That her touch was too soft, too warm, too tender, and it made my skin crawl.

So why was she still staring, looking at me with pity?

I hated it.

Her face would engrave itself in my mind if I didn’t look away. So I turned.

She saw the altar then.

“What the hell is that?” She released me and approached it. Her hand reached out toward the offerings.

“Don’t!”

Ellen was on the floor, rubbing her back and staring at me with her mouth hanging open.

“Why did you do that?” she looked at me accusingly, eyes sparkling with fear.

I had pushed her away. I must have. But I don’t remember moving—yet there I was, standing between her and the altar.

She got up slowly, hesitantly, like she was afraid I would push her again.

I will. I thought as I blinked away the nausea rising in my throat.

I’d been throwing up a lot. Black grit into the bowl. I never could remember doing it, until I was already kneeling there, staring at it, wiping my mouth.

“I need to rest.” I lied.

The words fell easily and calmly; they didn’t sound like me, but it didn’t matter.

She didn’t move. Concern had once again replaced the fear.

People stayed out of concern. They left when afraid.

“I just want to help…to make sure you’re okay,” She whispered, but I hadn’t seen her lips move.

“Ha!” The laugh came out sharp and mean. “You can’t help. You don’t even understand.”

“But you can’t go on like this, we’ll find someone who…” she insisted.

Why couldn’t she just shut up and leave?! Her voice was flooding the apartment, drowning him out.

“Please let me —” she continued.

“Shut up!” My scream silenced her plea, “Just shut up and leave. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone. I am fine!”

I wasn’t. But she would never understand, she would never know how I felt, and that was fine.

I had accepted that.

She walked out, but not before glancing at me once more. She muttered something about coming back.

The door closed too softly behind her, but it filled the whole room.

I pushed the sofa against it.

No one could get in. And I couldn’t get out.

Then I blocked her number.

She wants me to let go. To forget. They all do. But I won’t.

Her visit interrupted us.

For days after, silence reigned. I couldn’t hear him or feel him.

Even the eyes that followed me were gone.

He was slipping, and I was spiraling too fast and too far away from him.

I found the number for the Curandera.

The phone rang and rang and then clicked dead.

I called over and over, regardless of the hour.

Curled in front of the TV and altar, hoping and begging to sense him in the spaces in between calls. But there wasn’t anything there.

Without his presence sleep was harder to beat off.

Ice plunges. Fire-play. Micro-cuts. Lip picking.

I sought any and all stimulants and pain to keep my eyes open.

What was pain to loneliness?

She called back.

The phone screen flickered, and then her face appeared—old and gray. Her eyes were milky, like smoke trapped behind glass.

No questions were asked; she looked at me as if she already knew the reason I called.

“El altar, it's feeding something,” her raspy voice drawled.

“You’re not mourning,” she added, “You’re conjuring. Stop -"

The screen froze, went black and never turned back on.

I didn’t know what she meant at the time.

But I think I do now.

The shadows have grown thicker, longer, and they crawl over me even with the lights on.

Voices and whispers seeped out of the walls. They've crept into my ears and burrowed inside my head, where they scream at me.

Faces without eyes appeared. In the milk. In the water. In the spaces between furniture.

I’d blink and they would disappear, but they never left me.

My reflections started moving even when I don’t.

The face that stared back was supposed to be mine, but it looked nothing like me. Skin drawn taut over bone, dark circles around hollow eyes, lips torn and pulled into a smirk.

My skin doesn’t feel like my own, either.

Another wears it and moves it without my permission. Brushing my hair. Washing my face. Touching my body.

I saw him in the mirror once, standing behind me as I doubted my face.

He smiled, but it wasn’t his smile. It was too wide. Too forced. Too sinister.

A smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Eyes that watched but didn’t see me.

I didn’t move.

“You’re not him."

“No,” he admitted, the smile never fading. “But I’m close. Isn’t that enough?”

Falling glass clinked at my feet as I smashed the mirror. Blood trailed down the sides of the basin, filling the sink. My life was flowing out, and something was flowing in, but I didn’t care.

Shards still litter the floor, but I can’t bring myself to sweep them up.

I keep catching glimpses of him in them.

A hand. A grin. Sometimes two eyes watch from where it slipped beneath the dresser.

I haven’t slept in nine days.

Maybe more.

The candles have melted away, but the fire still burns.

I sit in his chair now, hugging my knees to my chest, rocking.

The apartment is so quiet, it screams.

“I can’t sleep,” I whisper.

I say it to the shadows, to the lamp, to the shattered mirror where I think I see him standing just beyond the glass.

“You mustn’t,” It says.

Not his voice, but it’s close, so close.

And that is enough.