A Story
Preface
How many times had I dreamt about a warm hand cupping my flushed face, deep eyes staring into mine, and soft lips uttering the soundless words, “I love you”? A mysterious, clouded figure always entered my sleep and stole my heart, night after night. Sometimes his hair was jet black and silky smooth, extending down his back into long pleats of ebony. Sometimes the hair molded with the nothingness around him, leaving a stark white face glowing in the abyss. The eyes held no color, though they appeared like deep pools of thought and emotion - the clichéd windows to the soul. Why were my unconscious thoughts so redundant? Why did they obsess over a faceless man whose presence almost crushed me? When I stood in the wide expanse of desert with the sun burning my skin and I felt his hand, so rough, so real on my cheek I felt my blood rush to the surface of my skin. While parts of my brain tried to connect the pieces of the events that had occurred the previous week, weaving together a story I wasn’t sure was real, I stared deeply into those colorless eyes. They showed me pieces of my soul I had buried, pieces that had fractured into locked-away memories and regrets. His lips parted, and I once again expected them to form the soundless words. The sound that came out of his mouth was so foreign that the reality of the moment hit me in my chest, stopped my breathing, and made my eyes roll as I fell to the hard, dry land beneath me.