ellipsis

When the dreams woke me up, I fumbled with the light and stared at a half-open magazine article: anything to distract myself. "Doctor…"she stammered.

The dots pulled me back to year-six grammar class.

"What are these dots, Miss Tyler?"

"An ellipsis. It represents words dropped from a sentence that are still there grammatically."

Dropped. My dreams replayed Dårlig Ulv-Stranden: "my last chance to say it: Rose Tyler—"

It cut off. Those last words were there—I just never heard them.

I love you.

Still there grammatically—but only grammatically. Not in reality. Or at least, not in this reality.