Elisabeth Writing

I had a dream about him, and about her. 

 It wasn’t the story about the couple who were torn apart by a slip in time and space, who each entered a shop for Halloween costumes, and became stuck in two different worlds, unable to reach one another. Forever. It is not the dream about the lovers who died, and the girl who had to choose: either go back to earth and find her love in reincarnation, or take the other door and find peace, to live there with her family. I’ll leave you to decide which door she took. I, of course, already know. And sometimes I dream about people from my past. I don’t always like those dreams. They tear out my peony heart and shred it, until only a lingering perfume remains in the still air. 

I saw her. She was holding a letter from a familiar hand, and the words seemed to shake and slip across the page, because her pale hands were trembling. Her pen hovered above a blank piece of paper, as if debating whether or not she should write anything at all. When she put pen to page though, she was lost. And so a correspondence began, once again. 

When he strolled back into her life it was with easy grace and a small smile that she knew as well as her own. They walked around the lake and I could feel the way her pulse raced, how he was reaching inside of her with the slightest hint of dimples and flickering eyes, reigniting her warmth and… love. 

My own heart sank as I saw that she was indeed falling in love with him, again. She was giggling and he had her heart in his hands. Again. She remembered the car crash, how he sat there with his glasses on, regarding her with fear and worry, holding one of her hands. Or the first time they kissed, on his bed, pretending to watch an action movie. She was remembering how she giggled as she straddled him and played with his hair. She could feel, somehow, the shirt he shoved in her mouth and the way he’d once worshiped her with his clever fingers and his silver  tongue. Or how he was going to walk endless acres to find a missing jewel. I remember her practically bouncing with excitement as she told me all of this, her face pink with pleasure. 

I think she wanted to be with him again, and I was screaming at her no, you can’t, you don’t understand. But she, unlike me, had no attachments and no loved one waiting for her at home. I wanted to shake her and say, don’t you remember the runes he carved into your body? I wanted to shout, but you sliced his heart and slipped in a piece of parchment with your name. You both poisoned each other. Can’t you see? Why can’t you stop? Run! Run! Run! 

I didn’t say it. I had no voice and anyway, you can’t tell your friends, even in Dream Land, how to live. She slipped away to see him again. She couldn’t get enough. She never could.