The dream is floating, lazily along the recesses of my brain. It is rolling gently along the banks of my memory. It is fluttering as softly as butterfly wings delicately tapping on the windows of my soul trying to awaken the recollection of it. I am sure that the dream is coming from someplace within the depths of my being.

    I try and remember the dream. It is sliding like the morning tide back into my memory bank. It is gliding swiftly through the recesses of my brain and rapidly dumping itself into the emptiness of my soul. I am drowning with the non-thought of it! I feel a fluttering jolt. The dream comes back to me. I smile with the vision of this handsome man, He is tall with soft curly hair and gentle blue eyes, and I am lost in them. They devour me. It is not my husband. I have dreamed of this man before.

    I can barley open my eyes and the left one is cradled within my pillow. My body will not register to my brain that is trying to wake up now. I’m aware that my right arm is hugging onto my pillow, but I can’t move it. Willing my right eye to open, I can see the fading night being replaced with the soft smoky light of morning. It is as if a pliant yellow light bulb has been turned on deep within the universe and is traveling with nowhere to go. I want it to move slower.

    I am awake now. I can move my arm and I am aware of my husband’s warm body up against me. We are laid out like two spoons fitting perfectly side-by-side. Even in sleep I can fill the fullness of his love for me. I lay there hungrily wanting more. I feel ashamed. In my dream I know that that the tall one and I are soul mates. Does this mean I want out of our marriage? Does this dream mean I am tired of my husband? Maybe I am seeing into the future.

    The night has faded replacing the dark with rays of sunlight twinkling playfully through the blinds. I lie there and watch the patterns of light on the carpet and listen to the desert crickets singing the aria of morning. The dream has popped as quickly as a child’s soap bubble. The memory of it lingers for an instant in the air, and then it starts floating gently across time. The dream has crossed that barrier before. I can’t remember the dream at all now, only the way it made me feel. I try again to hold on to the fibers of the dream, wanting to pull its comforting cloak around me. I shiver in the early morning crispness. I take comfort in the early chill for I know that soon the July sun will rise blanketing the California desert in rasping, choking heat. I long for Tuesday so I can go back to the coolness of the ocean. I long for this day to be over so I can fade away again in sleep, back to the tall man. I long for my husband to remove his heavy arm that is holding me fast to the bed. I get my wish. He rolls over and farts. He is still asleep.

    I turn and look at my sleeping husband. His thick gray hair is thinning and sticking up under the blanket’s edge. My body the spoon, moves into him and feels the comfort of his warm body next to mine. He smells faintly of the sweet wine he drank the night before. I breathe and hold his scent deep within me. He is my anchor holding me steadfastly to the shores of the life we have made together. He is my life, as I now know it. My husband’s body rolls over in sleep. He moves unlocking us. I hear a metallic click of our bodies separating. I hear that click often. His face is now showing as our blanket moves under his hearty double chin.

    I stare at his face, a face I’ve looked at for sixteen years. He has aged, but so have I. His lines are a little deeper. His nose has spread bigger with age and I try and count the stray hairs on the end of it. I glance at the picture of his father on our dresser. Yes, he looks so much like the man I never got to meet. He is becoming his father in age. I wonder if my husband is trying earnestly at this moment to hold on to his own dreams. I silently wish that I had the power to make all of his dreams come true. I wish that I could give him a magic lamp with all the wishes in the world for his happiness.

    I sigh knowing he would wrap it in the most beautiful paper and adorn it with gold and colored ribbon then kneel before my feet and simply hand it back to me.  I am his wife and his life. I wonder what cosmic force had collided to bring us together at this point in time. I’m lying next to him trying desperately to hold on to the extraordinary soothing power of my dream, and he deep in sleep’s solitude. The overwhelming feeling of his love for me is paralyzing. A silent tear gently rolls from the corner of my eye and falls soundlessly on my pillow. I am loved, adored by this man and yet I am ashamed, ashamed with the intense feeling of, “Is that all there is, and if that’s all there is, then I must keep dancing.” Dancing to where and to what?” Do I really want to dance with this man?

    I watch his face waking in sleep. His eyes focus on mine. Once again our bodies lock in the morning light. He is content; I feel the flutter of the tall man and know it is not our time yet. Fate will find us. I’ll see him again in sleep tonight.