24

Written last night at some ungodly hour.

They're back. The dreams.

It's those girls again, the ones who dance and glide their way into my sleep with their smooth curves and long hair that tangles itself around my limbs until I'm trapped in them and it's too late. Too late to do anything but smile and drink in their laughter like sweet syrup, let it coat my lips until they glisten and beg to be touched. They play music, the girls, creating notes with broken instruments that sound like freedom. They smell like patchouli and the ocean and they're beautiful like nature is beautiful, beautiful in their symmetry but also in their imperfections and their energy.

Dreams? Maybe not. Maybe they're only nightmares, because when I pull myself back to reality, my clothes are cold with sweat and I'm burning with heat (desire?), and all I can do is open all the windows wide open, flooding my room with cool wind and the sound of trees being tossed in it, rustling as if they have tree-secrets they're silently exploding with. And the girls' faces are still there in my mind, hovering and calling to me just behind my eyes, even though I tangle myself in sheets as I twist into myself, trying to rid them of my mind.

I can still feel their warm skin on my hands, my legs, my face, but it's not their patchouli-ocean scent that lingers in my room; it's his. At 2:30a.m., his boy-scent is everywhere, getting me high with loneliness and I miss him.

In one week we'll have been together for an entire year. But it's twenty-four days until he comes back, and with the girls sitting in the dark shadows of my bed, feeding me spoonfuls of insomnia, it's all I can think about.

He'd make them disappear.