Kiss

Dreams have a peculiar way of telling truths, even when they lie. I sat on the bed's edge, my feet making pendulums of themselves, like a child might do if time were a thing to be measured in swings rather than seconds. The waiting felt ancient, as if I'd been there since before stories began, though for what – or whom – I couldn't quite remember. That's the thing about waiting in dreams; the reason always seems to hide just behind your own thoughts, giggling.

The shadows in the corner of the room began to gather themselves into a shape that wore darkness like a coat. It should have been frightening, I suppose, the way monsters under beds and things that go bump in the night are frightening. Instead, my heart did a small dance of recognition, the kind that happens when you meet an old friend in an unexpected place.

Time hiccupped then, the way it does in dreams, and suddenly the darkness had a face. It was beautiful in the way that forgotten things are beautiful – familiar and strange all at once. When the kiss came, it felt like remembering a memory I hadn't made yet. Soft as moth wings, true as starlight, though truth in dreams is as reliable as a cat's promise.

The kiss tasted of maybes and might-have-beens, of stories that begin with 'once upon a time' but never quite reach their 'happily ever after.'

"Jee, gising na," came the voice from the waking world, shattering the dream like a mirror dropped on tile.

I found myself tangled in sheets that remembered the shape of my dreams better than I did. The face from the shadows slipped away like water through cupped hands, leaving only the ache of its absence. I wanted it to be you – needed it to be you – with the desperate certainty of someone who believes that dreams are maps to future truths. And so I would wait, as dreamers do, for reality to catch up with what my sleeping mind already knew.