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Description
"It's true, you know." Underneath dim lamplight. Blue walls. Broken venetian blinds. "What's true?", spoken tentatively, uncertainly. "You stutter. But only when you sleep. Your eyelids sort of flicker and you mumble something nonsensical and your body starts to twitch and you stutter, and then you steal all of the sheets".
Your mother was in the other room, drunk in the way that hidden alcoholics are, almost undetectable to those how don't know what to look for. Numb. And you were numb too, probably. Outside a dog barks, and the sound carries and reverberates throughout the neighborhood. I concentrate on that, the color of the walls, the way the light falls on all the objects, dimly, casting sharp and well-defined shadows, how very film noir.
We'd been together for 5 months. I came over every so often and spent a few nights. You cooked runny eggs in the morning. Your parakeet bit me. Your little brother clung to my leg and showed off his collection of toys. Your house was quiet and smoky with dust, in a way that made it seem alone in the world, its own singular bastion, a place of safety and isolation. At night we clung tentatively and secretly to eachother's bodies, as if they were a token of something greater, more intangible. Something slipping away.
And here we were now. 2 AM silence, the laissez-faire draping of arms and legs, an easy lean, upcast contemplative eyes.
"Sometimes I hear you say things". "What?" "You know, things. It scares me some times. I don't know what's a dream and what's real. What do you dream about?". "Elephants, mostly." That was a lie. I let loose a sigh and it makes a pattern in the silence, in the particles of dust that float in the air. "Are they large?". "No, rather small actually. Miniature. But Russian. Circus elephants. They smile, sometimes". "Smile?". "Yeah, you know... smile. The way elephants do, anyways. Do you know what I'm talking about? An elephant smile?". He smiles grotesquely, as if in a caricature, giving me his best elephant smile. "Not at all."
I laugh and consider the night. I know things won't always be so simple.
In truth I dreamt about a lot of things. Sometimes I dreamt about birds. But not normal birds. They had big long beaks that held many words, white piercing eyes. Their feathers shed constantly, but they always had new ones. When I wasn't dreaming about birds sometimes I was dreaming about airplanes, but when I wasn't dreaming about airplanes it was usually libraries or murders or old forgotten Victorian mansions. A lot of times I dreamed about things even more dire and personal, and I worried that that was when I spoke, and that was when I stuttered.
We're so unguarded in sleep. So simple. That scares me. I don't want to be simple. I don't want to be unguarded. Not with you. You're too intangible, to uncomplicated, too pure. You laugh and it scares me because that laugh is too pure and too simple and I know some day it will be more tinged with doubt. That's just the way these things work.
Someday you will fade, from relevance, from life. It's already happening. The lamp on the desk is hardly bright enough. I can only see thin slivers of your face, faint impressions of expression. And I fear that someday, soon, you'll fade out completely, and you'll only be a vague shadow in the distance, and I'll never be able to reach you again, because the sun will always go down.

Description
"It's true, you know." Underneath dim lamplight. Blue walls. Broken venetian blinds. "What's true?", spoken tentatively, uncertainly. "You stutter. But only when you sleep. Your eyelids sort of flicker and you mumble something nonsensical and your body starts to twitch and you stutter, and then you steal all of the sheets".
Your mother was in the other room, drunk in the way that hidden alcoholics are, almost undetectable to those how don't know what to look for. Numb. And you were numb too, probably. Outside a dog barks, and the sound carries and reverberates throughout the neighborhood. I concentrate on that, the color of the walls, the way the light falls on all the objects, dimly, casting sharp and well-defined shadows, how very film noir.
We'd been together for 5 months. I came over every so often and spent a few nights. You cooked runny eggs in the morning. Your parakeet bit me. Your little brother clung to my leg and showed off his collection of toys. Your house was quiet and smoky with dust, in a way that made it seem alone in the world, its own singular bastion, a place of safety and isolation. At night we clung tentatively and secretly to eachother's bodies, as if they were a token of something greater, more intangible. Something slipping away.
And here we were now. 2 AM silence, the laissez-faire draping of arms and legs, an easy lean, upcast contemplative eyes.
"Sometimes I hear you say things". "What?" "You know, things. It scares me some times. I don't know what's a dream and what's real. What do you dream about?". "Elephants, mostly." That was a lie. I let loose a sigh and it makes a pattern in the silence, in the particles of dust that float in the air. "Are they large?". "No, rather small actually. Miniature. But Russian. Circus elephants. They smile, sometimes". "Smile?". "Yeah, you know... smile. The way elephants do, anyways. Do you know what I'm talking about? An elephant smile?". He smiles grotesquely, as if in a caricature, giving me his best elephant smile. "Not at all."
I laugh and consider the night. I know things won't always be so simple.
In truth I dreamt about a lot of things. Sometimes I dreamt about birds. But not normal birds. They had big long beaks that held many words, white piercing eyes. Their feathers shed constantly, but they always had new ones. When I wasn't dreaming about birds sometimes I was dreaming about airplanes, but when I wasn't dreaming about airplanes it was usually libraries or murders or old forgotten Victorian mansions. A lot of times I dreamed about things even more dire and personal, and I worried that that was when I spoke, and that was when I stuttered.
We're so unguarded in sleep. So simple. That scares me. I don't want to be simple. I don't want to be unguarded. Not with you. You're too intangible, to uncomplicated, too pure. You laugh and it scares me because that laugh is too pure and too simple and I know some day it will be more tinged with doubt. That's just the way these things work.
Someday you will fade, from relevance, from life. It's already happening. The lamp on the desk is hardly bright enough. I can only see thin slivers of your face, faint impressions of expression. And I fear that someday, soon, you'll fade out completely, and you'll only be a vague shadow in the distance, and I'll never be able to reach you again, because the sun will always go down.