What I fall asleep to

Love. Dreams. They say that dreams aren't dreams if they come true, so what if you dream about love? Maybe love has some supreme celestial pass-card, making it bypass something even as true as that.

I've never really dreamt of the future before a little more than a year ago. There was this jet-lag induced dream of dancing with the new boy at school and there were a lot of imagined fantasies that I made myself believe I had dreamt when I fell for Matthew, but true dreams of the future never really got caught in the web of my mind. And then I met Nathan, and fell in love with him, and suddenly my dreams have changed.

While my nighttime escapades have always been vivid, they've been even more so in the last year and a half. Maybe it's because I'm maturing mentally but I'd like to think it's partly Nathan's presence that's changed it too. I've had people on my mind constantly before, but with him...it's almost all-encompassing.

My first dream I had of him was just him and I, sitting close to each other on an olive green couch. Not sure if we were doing much else, but that was the bulk of it: that olive green couch and us. I remember telling him about it the next day and him saying that was kind of a coincidence, since he had an olive green couch or bed cover or something. I didn't know it at the time, but green was and is his favourite colour. It was a sign of things to come.

And recently, maybe March or April, a late-night conversation with Tammi induced one of my most vivid and cherished dreams. It was dark and late, and the conversation had lapsed into a lull when I posed the simple question "What would I do when I see him?" By "him", I meant Nathan of course and I immediately answered my own question and sent myself into a spiral of fantastical wonderment than turned into one of the most vivid and repeated daydreams of my life up to now.

I said I would be going down the escalator in the airport, wringing my hands and chewing my lip. I'd get to the bottom and I'd look toward where he'd be picking up his luggage. I wouldn't see him for a moment and then I would. My eyes would widen a bit and I'd take two slow strides towards him, and inhale before breaking into an urgent trot. Then I would stop right in front of him and look up at him (He's a bit taller than me) and I'd beam and say...actually I wouldn't say anything at first. I couldn't because I'd be beaming and probably giggling at the fact I'm really seeing him. Then I'd mum my lips and stare hard at him (He'd probably be squinting at me, thinking I'm a dork for not even saying hi yet) before gingerly reaching up and touching his face with my hands. I'd stroke his cheek and fix his hair behind his ears, run my fingers over his lips, chin and nose. And then I'd say...

"I just had to make sure you are really here."

For two months afterwards and still fairly frequently now, I still fall asleep to that dream and that meeting and...it renders me speechless reliving it once more.

Love and dreams.

~Vickie