DREAM
Rounded by a little sleep.
That was how he felt all the time now. Ever since then. Ever since waking up.
He thought it would be hard to move on, but it was easy. It didn't feel like anything had even happened. The world just went on. Kids played in the park. Couples went to the movies. Bars lit up at night. The streets moved. He spent time watching them all. Spent time traveling, taking in the air, practicing his photography. He never realized how much he missed it. Never even realized he had stopped taking pictures in the first place.
He visited Niagara Falls not long after all of it. Stood on the edge of the viewing platform, breathed in the strong air, felt the wind and spray whip his hair and kiss his face. He took photos. Later, in the university darkroom, he hoped something would show up. Some message in the falls. Some etching in the sky. Something. Anything. But it was just the rushing water. It was just the cold froth.
On the bus. On the shore of a lake. On the edge of his bed. Just beyond the window. Just beyond the wall. That taste of damp air never left him. That smell of rain. That scent of dew. Cool and crisp, like his hand on the mirror. On the dark of the camera lens.
He thought about visiting his parents. Thought he had to, that it was the right thing to do. It was a sign, he thought at first, in the early days after leaving that room. You need to change. You're doing something wrong. That's why it happened to you. But he couldn't muster it. Days went by, months, then years. Nothing changed. The sense that he had to put it behind him, revise his life, went away. He had swapped rooms, swapped jobs, but it was still the same. More than ever, it just felt like he was treading water. Like he was stuck behind glass.
Something did change eventually. He met a girl. Karen. He had been snapping shots in the park one clear-gray morning and caught her in the lens while she was reading. An angel in white. She smiled, had even posed. They laughed. It went from there. Maybe he didn't quite love her—not yet—but she was soft. Her eyes. Her hands. Her breasts. Her lips. It was strange at first, waking up to a warm body where the cool of the bed had been. Not being alone.
Sometimes, when he had been awake for a while, just staring at the ceiling, she would rustle, run a hand over his chest.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," he'd say. "Just thinking."
He couldn't tell her. Not because she wouldn't understand, but because he was forgetting. He was losing it. He fought to keep hold of the details—the metal, the rust, the waterlogged wood—even though everything in him was saying to let it go. He didn't need it anymore. He never needed it. But if he let it go, then those people were gone forever. That place was gone forever. Everything he went through. Eileen.
Eileen.
He tried to call her, but she never answered. Never connected. He thought maybe she had managed to move on, that she had made it. But then he realized, no, she had just forgotten. She had woken up one day, and that was all it was. A bad dream. A nightmare. A bump in the night and nothing more. The memory had lingered and then faded, like a waft of perfume, a cloud of smoke. Here and then not here. There and then gone.
Was that all it had been? A dream? Why was it so hard to shake off, then? Why did it feel so important? That night that just kept going. That unreality. That sense of illusion, like even his eyes and ears were tricking him, like he had been taken from his body and placed somewhere else. Like he was just floating thoughts, a self without a self, trapped in a box. Trapped while the rest of the world went on. While he went on. What was left of him on the outside.
He would look at himself in the mirror. He would pinch himself. He would grab his skin and try to pull it off the bone. Get out. Get out. Find the sign. Find anything. Only he couldn't. He wasn't afraid. He was just too tired.
They went for a walk one day. The sun was out. The birds were chirping. Her hand was warm in his.
"We should see a movie tonight," she said.
He nodded. Any excuse to get out. Any excuse to keep from dreaming.
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