The land of untold stories

She awakes suddenly to her heart pounding loudly in her chest. The room is pitch black except for a sliver of moon shining through the blinds. He visited her dreams again tonight.

She puts one hand on her forehead and sighs; while the other arm reaches across hoping that miraculously the vast absence beside her has been filled. And it only takes five seconds for the truth to settle in. She is alone, more alone than she’s ever been. There’s just something obvious about emptiness even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

No matter how much you tell yourself you are over someone, your heart knows the truth. You see even if we lie to ourselves during the day the body is compelled to speak the truth at night. Maybe its because we talk so much during the day we can’t hear what the heart is saying. And if you don’t pay attention then it talks to you through a dream or a memory. And a dream is a poem the body writes. Therefore her nights were long and her dreams were endless.

They had broken every promise and vow that they made… and yet she loved him just the same. Dreams were a place her subconscious screamed loudly that it was over. He was gone, the marriage over. Left with only empty space and memories that no one, not even she, could ever erase. So it was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet that those voices would rise up like ghosts, soft and haunting filling her mind until sleep finally came.

But when morning rose she’d always wake up distraught, knowing that her startling reality was much too different. That she couldn’t dive into her dreams and simply pluck them to life. They were just snapshots and short glimpses into where that life could have went had it kept on going in that direction. And she can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever be someone worth holding, someone worth keeping.

So she dreams what she’d not dare say awake. But the nights are not simply long enough to jump start her heart again. After 10 years of marriage, here she was, in a house, in a bed, that once held everything she ever needed to be happy. Left holding only her dreams, the only thing to keep her warm at night with the damned distance unbridgeable.

She once heard that time heals all wounds. But she can’t totally agree. She’s come to think that there are wounds that time cannot heal and distances that simply do not make oblivion.

Each night each of us dreams of what we are less aware of during the day. But there are things you never get used to even if you have all the time in the world. You don’t get used to the empty space on the other side of the bed. You’ll never get used to not seeing their smile. Or avoid buying 2 drinks in a bar, or 2 tickets for a concert. Or to avoid smelling their perfume. Or to that feeling of heartbreak every time you look in the mirror and realize that you are the biggest fool of all for letting go the love of your life.

Outside the dawn is breaking. She only has a couple precious hours of sleep left in the night. So she closes her eyes and falls asleep to their song. The one he dedicated many years ago. The one he said reminded him of her. And like a key that unlocked their past she fell into a dream of him and her. And in the land of untold stories, in the echo of their story she losses herself in one more dream again…