Life is Dreaming

Have you ever had a dream? Has it woken you?

I think you know that feeling, to be lying awake in the static between sleeping and living. To be not quite sure on which side you’re dwelling. Those stagnant seconds where you can sense that the world has been moving without you and it’s almost a betrayal - but it can’t be, really, can it? It’s a reminder. That feeling. It’s a reminder of what it would be like at the end.

How did it feel, to be both asleep and awake?

I am I. Am I? Yes.

I move and I move and it’s some sort of miracle. There’s the sun in the sky and I feel it. Like dust that begins to coat my arms, layer by layer, until I’m thick with heat. Sweat? I lick above my lips and a fizz of something touches my tongue. Something not quite like salt seeped through skin, I know, but a close imitation.

A car is coming. Wheels churn against the gravel of a small country road and I’m sticking my hand out before I even know what I’m doing. This is hitchhiking. Let the sounds become caught in the air and move away from me just as I’ve grasped onto them, like the shape of a cloud pushed apart by the wind.

“You want me to take you all the way to London?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. I am I, but now I am something more. I am now a We, and we are sitting side by side in his run-down car speeding past the patchwork fields of the English countryside.

“What are you doing in the city, anyway?” I am also a You.

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, if you don’t want me asking that’s okay. You prefer it quiet?” I look at him - at the days-old stubble and cherry-red nose. His skin is yellowing beneath a cap that matches the faded, worn blue of his eyes. I wonder if he knows he is sick. “What?” he says, glancing away from the road to meet me eyes with a frown.

“I don’t mind talking,” I say, looking back out of the window.

“You’ve got a bit of a weird vibe going on, you know? Anyone ever told you that?”

“No.”

“Where are you from?”

“Back there,” I say, pointing over my shoulder.

“The village? You don’t really look the type. No offence or anything. I like the pink,” he raises a hand from the wheel and tousles his own imaginary hair. “I’ve just never seen anyone down here with anything like that, you know? It’s bold. Something my daughter would do, probably.”

“You have a daughter?” I ask.

“Marie,” he smiles. “She’s only twelve, but she’s gonna be a right old force when she grows up. She’s got a right old mouth on her and all. But you’d never hear such clever stuff come out of such a tiny person, I’ll tell ya.”

“She’s a genius?”

He laughs. “You got a real strange humour, you know that?”

“No.”

“Real witty. Yeah, Marie would like you.”

“Maybe I could meet her sometime.”

“Well… yeah, maybe.” I’m looking out of the front window again, but I see him shoot me a quizzical look. Is it obvious?