A bright ray of deceivingly warm light.
I blink once, my eyes foggy and clouded from sleep.
It seems to me, every morning, waking from those beautiful dreams is a tragedy.
It falls over me like shattered glass that they are not true.
Kaori is gone, although those beguiling, sweet dreams suck me in, that hideous clarity, that awful tranquility and bliss is only a lie.
The years do not offer any solace from the fall I suffer every morning into a bed of nails. The only thing they do is familiarize me with the sting. The only thing I see in my future is maybe a sheet covering the tips, at best, so that I might not know what is under them. In the end, however, they still run me through.
I stare at the ceiling, wondering if this is all life held, after love. That would be the title of my life, I thought, if it were a book. Life after love. But how long would it last? Am I simply the same joke, over and over? A violin, playing the same sad tune, day after day?
Even though, by my side, there is a beautiful, feisty redhead that I claim to love, the girl is only there to yank me to my feet every morning from that pain.
But the wounds remain, and are reopened every day, in the same place.
I experience the pain every day as though it were new.
Kaori simply will not let me go.
I finally sit up. My long hair curls swirl around me, a heavy drape sheilding me from the cold. It reminds me of another girl's hair, silken, smooth, beautiful black ribbons of coal. I get up from the blankets, cool wind blowing my hair softly around my chest, unclothed. I take no notice. I walk to the window, and open it.
I stare for a moment at the little balcony beyond the windowsill, and on impulse, I climb out onto it.
I stare out onto the dark, deserted forest.
The warm orange of the ground and the dark, emerald green of the forest, and the royal blue/black of the sky mix, like a Van Gogh painting. It is ethereal. I look up and see a ladder to the roof of Miator, and without thinking, I move over to it and lithely ascend it to the roof.
The stars are oddly blurry and I realize my cheeks are wet. It is not raining. I am crying, very quietly weeping, but I feel outside of it.
When I make it to the edge, I sit down and swing my legs over.
I close my eyes and think of my dreams - Kaori stands before me, smiling gently, naked, her feeble hand reaching toward me, and I reach for hers - but she vanishes.
Suddenly, pain wells up in my stomach, and I think again how cruel it is that these dreams are stolen from me time after time.
I rise to my feet, and wonder how it would be if I could dream all the time, sleep forever. I look at the ground below, and the wind pushes my hair forward.
It circles me and then falls softly again on my cheek. I close my eyes and smile, my own matching hers.
I tilt my head back into the wind, and I decide, as the wind moves with me again, forward.
I will stay, in these beautiful dreams.
