A Dream in Waking
I don’t even know when I first started looking up.
Surrealist
855-word count
CW: None
When I lay down to sleep, I open someone else’s eyes. Their long eyelashes blink away tiredness and stare up at the streaks of light clawing across the ceiling. And I can hear the distant buzzing of an alarm that suddenly roars into focus. I can never manage to turn it off the first time, instead sending the old clock clanging to the floor. Blurred vision was in desperate need of correcting beyond the worn frames perched on the end table.
Settling into a different skin is like putting on a shirt that is too small and soaking wet. It snags and pulls at odd places and refuses to lay flat. But you try to make it work nonetheless. The curl of fingers and toes is stiff until you work them a little, standing in front of the mirror to admire a stranger’s physique.
Were we still considered strangers at this point? How many years did you have to spend trading sleep with someone before they were no longer a stranger? Was it after the first ‘family’ outing? Or after you’d filled an entire diary for them explaining every detail of ‘their’ life?
How long should you wait until you acknowledge that you’d become this other person?
A curled note taped to the mirror is a reminder that I am confident. Strong. More than what people viewed on the surface. They liked their affirmations, leaving a breadcrumb trail of them through their entire morning routine in neat, orderly handwriting I was still working on imitating. I pass by all those little memos without much thought now, eager to skip past mundane tasks to the best part of this other life.
On their doorstep the sky opens to a brilliant river of color and stars. Blinking at the spray that makes up galaxies so far away, I don’t even mind their uncorrected eyes as the colors blur together into soft swirls. Sometimes I wish I could spend hours getting lost in the vastness that lies unexplored just above us.
I didn’t used to pay much attention to the sky. It had little effect on my life as I went from point a to b. And yet here, I love every version of it. The kaleidoscope of stars. The tumultuous pouring rain. Even dappled beams of honey sunlight.
I don’t even know when I first started looking up.
Did it really matter? Now that I’d discovered something so incredible that I didn’t want to leave this other life? So much so that I dreamed about living it in my real waking hours.
Could I trade and take over this life?
That was a dangerous thought. Lusting over a life that wasn’t mine. What would happen to the owner of it if I tried to take it? Was that even possible? I could just not sleep. Maybe if you put off sleeping and waking long enough you could prevent the switch.
But would I want it when I was living it and not just dreaming it?
Some things would need to change. The glasses for one. And the bottom step on the front porch that sagged. Of course the horrible alarm clock.
Spiraling into these thoughts of what I would change, if I could, about this other person’s life that I was lucky enough to have a glimpse into always brought me back to my senses. They didn’t need a new pair of glasses, because they only wore them for reading. It was my eyes that couldn’t adjust to the pitiful prescription. The sagging step hadn’t been disturbed because the local ducks liked to roast under the porch, a perfect place to keep their new ducklings dry. And the alarm clock was for me, so I would get to share a little bit of their life. I was a deep sleeper and the horrible buzzing was jarring enough to pull me out of my own dreams.
Their life and the things in it worked for them and that was all it had to do. Who was I to want to change it?
As I sat down on the wooden steps, immersed in the twinkling, I pulled out the notepad that we kept there for late-night scribbles. They’d noted that the ducklings were starting to root around for bugs in the lawn. And that a meteor fall was scheduled in the next few days. They apparently had had the time to critique my attempts to mimic their handwriting, with cute doodles and suggestions to extend my dots and crosses and the ends of the final letter of a word.
I began a retort, explaining my analytical methods, but my eyes were drooping and I was leaning toward the porch railing. These warm summer nights were so good at putting me to sleep, no matter how much I wanted to stay and watch the stars.
When I close my eyes I go back to my regular life. With memories of starlight and wonder buzzing in my mind. Knowing that somewhere, someone is waking up to my favorite view. And a note saying I was looking forward to our next rendezvous.
