you are dreaming.

it is night-time, snowy outside but not cold, and you are getting in the wrong car. the wrong car entirely, a black taxicab from back in the more romantic day when chivalry meant something and girls didn't spend their time wondering if he was gonna call or when he was gonna make a move or what he was up to when they lie in bed at four in the morning.

the wrong car entirely, because it's his car he called and he climbs in beside you and you have no idea how you got here. (a movie you watched recently says you can always tell when you're dreaming because you are just plunked in the middle of situations, with no recollection of how it came to be. maybe you should have realised this sooner.)

so there you sit and there he sits, silent, beside you in the back seat of the entirely-wrong-car, and you are far too close, too close like you are at a crowded bar except - there is all that empty space on your left side with no excuses but he doesn't tell you to move and so you don't. you keep your eyes trained ahead, blow a breath out that you can clearly see crystallised in the winter air before it melts away.

you feel his leg pressed up against yours, the vinyl of his coat slippingsliding against your gloves and you wonder if your hair is unattractive, if your skin is clear and there is no sense of the usual liberation in this dream, no sense of flying or falling or either - (if you tried to fly you would fall, and if you fell you would scrape your knee). tension. tensiontensiontension, thick in the air as snowflakes. he is going home to his girlfriend.

andallofthesudden.
fingers (maybe he pulls up his arm to check the time and you let your hand fall from where you were brushing your hair out of the way) catch and then. you are (holding hands?). there is all that empty space on your left side and there is no excuses for this, no excuses for - feeling your breath hitch and your teeth automatically worry on your bottom lip as your fingers slide closer together - but he doesn't tell you to move and so you don't. his thumb brushes against your bare wrist, slightest break between wool and northface, and it can't be a coincidence, it can't be that his hand is warm on accident like lightning

the lights of the late-night traffic outside are suddenly blocked by a looming shadow, and then you are at the dorms again. he lets go. he gets out.

"seventh floor," he says to a bellhop (yea, this is definitely not from this century, or else you are at a really swanky private college you think he can't afford and you know you definitely can't afford) and then you are watching him beneath the busted-out light of the cramped elevator space. ding. he leaves without a word, sticks the key in the lock, and you are

back in the car wondering how it would feel to maybe kiss him, maybe pull his fingers toward your mouth and slide them down your neck, and then all that extra room on your left side would have some usage! and

behind the door with the key in the lock is his girlfriend. bye, seventh floor. you live on the fourth.

the outside terrace on your landing is cold as ice, but you sit out and smoke a cigarette to keep a friend company by the buzzing vending machines with generic plastic food and the piled-up snow, still falling. god you won't believe this, she says, fuck i really should be studying for that bio test, she says, why is it so dark i don't like it, she says, and you actually fucking hate the cold and your ears have gone numb so you're not quite listening but the entire time you're wondering if maybe he will for whatever reason decide he needs a coke or a bag of chips or whatever and climb down the narrow fire-escape stairs to your floor with change in his pocket and (change?) in his mind.

whatever. he doesn't. because he lives on the

"seventh floor," he says to the bellhop, and

you decide you are on the wrong floor, and make some sort of mad dash back to the elevator like it's in danger of shutting down and press seven, seven, sevensevenseven but the walls start closing in on you and suddenly it's flimsy plastic, it's a box, it's a plastic generic food bag and you are pressed against the ceiling and you just want to -

wake up.

(maybe realize that your subconscious isn't as stupid as it thinks; maybe realize that you have probably, what, had it bad for, crushed on, been infatuated with, loved????, him for a long while now. three cheers for being melodramatic!)

a movie you recently watched says you're dreaming when you don't know how you got somewhere; well. either it's not just limited to dreamspace, or you really, really need to wake up now.

mood_ contemplative
music_ hey ya (acoustic cover) - matt weddle/obadiah parker
crave_ man from the dream

Labels: boys, dreams, figuring things out, i don't do poetry