This Is Real

This Is Real.mp3

(GG interruption: This is one of the two winners of the Giant Bag of M&Ms UNphoto Challenge.)

It is now, right now, and I am walking through the halls in my mind until I reach your door. I open it and now I am in your room and it is real; real as if my feet really did warm the floor because you know cold is just heat backwards; real as if I really did ball-heel, ball-heel, ball-heel tip-toe back into your heart. I mean, room.

Your bed is empty. Too empty. You are in it, but it is not full, as the blankets not bunching around you indicate. Your eyes are closed as you face the wall, your forehead shadowed by the cutaway that frames the nook in which you sleep - but you turn over and as you do they open to greet the unholy hour and crinkle with a smile. I understand you are remembering Us, and that makes me happy, and so I climb into bed with you. You cannot feel my hand as it threads my arm around your torso, limbs entangling and elbows theoretically knocking, but I am there in some sense and I will you to feel even just a little warmer.

I can smell you now, though each real breath tears through the phantom, leaving me to rebuild. I can feel your curls against my cheek and I know I can brush your neck with my lips as you close your eyes again. And I remember the new year; the year of change... The one we ushered in together at a friend's house, the way we all clambered into bed with one another, the way we were almost precisely the same way we would be - almost precisely - were imagination enough to fuel reality.

The light cut out each individual hair on your head in absolute clarity. Just like blue christmas lights. So intense you need to look away, but so perfect you can't. There was no colour, then, though. Just you and the way that the wan light etched the curve of your cheek into my mind. It is fading, now, and I wish that I had thought to preserve it. I wish that I had disrupted the moment to save its beginning.

I wish I could remember your face.

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