A Barbaric Yawp

Someone to Need

Among the billions of dreams about ballerinas turned battlers and striving to be anyone but herself, there was only one in which slumber's magic left her untouched. Usually, she surrendered the real Rosie when sleep took her by the hand and opened a wardrobe of possibilities. She could be or do anything. She could realize every hidden desire and sink her teeth into them, whether playing the prowling wolf or the child getting its first taste of a peach.

This time was different. She felt so...normal. But even with normality, she was somehow able to interrupt his stroll with a simple glance, halting both him and his Shetland Sheepdog. He looked at her like he needed her, like he wanted her to care for him, and she couldn't help but agree. He started towards her, but something held him back, and before she could reach him, the quietus of the dream broke them apart. The sorrow was there, but it wasn't strong enough to survive when a text message blasted away any element of the dream that sought to linger. She forgot the man with the Sheltie who'd stopped at her glance and made her feel so alive in normality. In that moment, he had shown her exactly what she was missing.

But she didn't remember.

Not when she was en route to find him, not when she saw his face, and not when her adopted Shetland Sheepdog laid down on her lap for the first time.

PARADISE CITY 

“Are you in much pain?” he asked.

I suddenly realized I wasn’t. During the screams and shattering glass, pain was all I felt, but now…nothing.

I expected an ivory world, but it was ecru. I expected harps, but I heard Axl Rose. The angel opposite me wasn’t like I expected either. He looked like you. Like me. Like it all might be a dream. Like the dirty floor of Heaven was just the dirty floor of Tommy’s Tavern.

#FridayFlash

An Ocean Affair

No one dreams of dying on the beach. At least, not like this. If they do, it is a dream flanked by happy memories: days and nights of salty kisses and footsteps that follow them home to embed grains of reminiscence in the carpet. No one dreams of crimson clumps or wondering whether you’ll be able to wriggle free before high tide washes the ability to wonder away.

While I wait for the clock of anima to run out, I’ll dream I’m dying elsewhere: in my bed, many years from now, with him curled around me and not a clump of crimson to be found. I’ll dream of a life in which I hadn’t been so careless, so impulsive, so…deserving of this. I never meant to hurt him. All I wanted was love in my life, and now I don’t have love or life. Unless…

The waves lick adoringly and the soft sands cradle me like never before. The ocean seems to whisper "Love you, love you, love you. Come with me to the depths, and we'll dance forever. No one has asked you to dance before, have they? They must have known you were waiting for me."

The crimson clumps look like valentines now.