The Dreams In The Morning

I fish out my pen and halt, mind drowning somewhere. I notice that I’ve been looking at the mirror for a while now. Eyelids are getting too heavy to open properly. I look horrible. Overgrown hair and the wholesome look of two weeks of sleeplessness. No breathtaking beauty was there to begin with. The circles around my eyes are dark as charcoal. I turn away from inspecting my face, which looked as if the skin was shrinking and wrapping the skull, because I look ugly whether I know it or not.

I shove my focus back to what I was doing, jolting down my useless dream.

Sometimes you can dream between sleeping and waking up, in a state of semi-sleep. It will write an end to your rare ten minutes of sleep. That half-awake dream. But you might remember it long enough to write it down. And I need to write something, just something, or I’ll forget how to write. I scribble with all my spite on the corner of the paper. I don’t know how else to make this ball point work. The ink shows up eventually. I try to describe the now foggy and distorted dream, I’ve almost forgotten how to describe anything.

 I write about how I was sitting on a slope, leaning back with my arms as supports on either side, a blue watch almost being scratched by a rock. I had moved my hand so that it wouldn’t scratch, but in reality, I wouldn’t have cared. The slope, gentle where I sat, was steeper downwards. There was grainy dirt under my hand and the feel of slightly wet mist on my face as the breezes from the forest below blew. I think I remember smiling, another reminder that it was just a dream. Not that I can’t smile, but the energy needs such planed and precise building up that it's tiring.

It’s time for the dream to go, it's dissolving into colors and chirps of birds in the distance. There were a lot of blues and greens. But it's better that it fades away with its nonexistent wonders.

I glance at my watch, not registering the time but deducing that it was early morning. I blink really hard two three times, trying to make my eyelids either close completely or open completely, but they still hung halfway, too stubborn to close, too tired to open. There is this half joke half superstition from my place. That dreams in the morning come true. I wonder where I’d find the place in the dream. I don’t have enough energy to get out of the house. But maybe it does have a chance come true? I don’t know what to believe in either way.

I look at the watch again, this time to inspect how pathetic it looked. The dial was glass, it had looked good and glorious, now it was all dirty and two cracks run near the center. The watch was near decease but it still somehow held on, against its will. I haven’t taken it off in the past three weeks and red lines have appeared on my wrist, when I think about it, it hurts, but otherwise, my whole body hurts, as if someone was freezing me.

Every day the pain has a new dimension to it, a little strangeness to the familiarity. It keeps me from growing numb to it. The watch’s ticking still sounding new enough to bore into my head, shadows being new enough to be comfortable, every texture being new enough to shrink from, time being new enough to never make sense, any firm decision being new enough to be torn away by tears.

Thoughts being new enough to be tortured with.

I look back at my sore wrist. I don’t even have to actually notice this, what can I do to stop it from joining the rest of me.

I hear a drizzle outside. I think I liked rain. Did I? I did. Can I like it again? I can’t. I pause enough for the smell of dust and spilled eucalyptus tincture to reach me. I have reached the point. And so I break down, tears choosing trails, I grasp the sides of my head, willing my fingers to dig through the skull, and try to shrink myself. Everything is broken. Everything is ruined. I can’t fix anything.

I can’t be fixed.

Why does the thoughts stay new?

I try to get up from the chair and collapse to the ground. Try to stand up balancing on the it and it falls with me. Making enough noise to shatter my head. I don’t have enough energy to move anymore. Everything goes quite. There is just the sound of the drizzle. The watch had stopped ticking.

I get up, shoulders and knees aching with the effort, and pace into the drizzle outside. It stops just like that. The sky stops crying. Because of me? Is it afraid of me? Does it think that I'll judge it?

What I’m planning to do feels childish to the core, but adult mentality has just broken me, I don’t want it. So, I hug the sky, slowly, fingers cutting through air which was humid but cold enough to have dimension. The sky needs a hug now.

I feel my face softening and relaxing, it’s not a smile, but the obstructions are fading away, melting into the cold as the smell of rain fill me, and as the echoes of water dripping from somewhere reverberate through my rib cage.

I keep on hugging the sky and my hands wrap around myself. Now I was hugging myself. Something I’ve done millions of times, reassuring myself that the world was a safe enough place to sleep in. But this time I was reassuring the sky that it didn’t have to be afraid of me. That it could trust me.

I remove the dead watch from my wrist and look at my wrist closely. I stride inside, wash my wrist, trying not to be harsh, and pat it dry with something clean. It’s just sore skin, it would heal.

I look back at the watch, it looks as if it needed to say something to me, but it looks hesitant. I take it to where it was supposed to be and placed it down. I had another watch, a blue one with leather straps; I didn’t use it much, not at all actually. I had removed it’s batteries and placed it there for the use of a ideal someone who wouldn’t ruin it.

Wasn’t it there in my dream? It was! Is it something like, what was that, yes, an omen? Does dreams seen in the morning actually come true? It wouldn’t hurt if they did, would it? I don't know...

I take my journal up from the desk and read through what I wrote, reading some parts again and again until I closed my eyes and took a long, soft breath in.

●●●

I am ready to slip through the door but I freeze.

“Oh, yes, I forgot, I forgot; oh god this feels so silly.”

I scramble back into my room, stand straight and look rather pathetic. I knot my eyebrows together, fidget with my blue watch and run my fingers through my neatly combed hair, making it stick up slightly.

This feels so weird.

“Uh, maybe dreams in the morning do come true? I, I, saw you in the dream, right? I really need some self-appreciation! So, like why not, two days are okay, I was getting terrible at work so much that I’m sure that would’ve kicked me out if they got a chance anyway… and eh, I guess I’d stop here?”

I shrug and my reflection shrugs with me. I don’t really believe that mirrors helps with confidence, but I believe in dreams in the morning, and maybe myself, that’s enough for now, and ever.

And so, I head out to show the sky that I could be trusted with myself.