I keep dreaming of her.
Each time I fall asleep, she is waiting for me.
There is no blankness in my dreams.
There are no forgotten moments in my dreams.
There are no lapses in awareness.
I am only drenched in the present of each moment. Every word, every emotion, every action is stained into my memory like branded scars.
It was not always like this, but it is now.
When the days leave and my eyes close, a new world opens, and every time, she is there. They all are.
She takes on the forms of all the women that have ever laughed with me with loving eyes.
Together, they have the soft combined touch of all those that have ever caressed me with hands that pulled for me to fill them.
Her motions are theirs.
All of their emotions are hers.
Each time I close my eyes she is there and so they are too.
The consistency is prolific.
Each time I close my eyes they all are her.
And because of this, each dream is bliss.
And because of this each dream is confusion.
Each dream is beautiful. A beautiful confusion.
They were all so absolutely beautiful.
In our dreams, we meet at cafes, parks, bars and lofts.
We gaze, we question, we share, we hope. And we struggle.
We are trying to have conversations, but we keep fumbling our words. It’s like we can’t allow each other the opportunity to speak, so we are accomplishing saying nothing at all, though the air is full of words.
In other dreams we fill our hands with coffees.
There are 3 of us. She, her, he. They.
We are sharing space.
We are sharing attention.
We are trying to share intentions.
We are navigating anxieties.
We are reflecting on a past that was just a glimpse.
We keep revisiting the moments from before. We are mining the earth of memories. We are trying to understand the ruins we hold so close.
We are manifesting powerfully into the present, bringing the past to the present so that it blurs all we can see, and then it exists again.
Again as if the time has been frozen, and our words are the sun, we are melting all the anguish, the misunderstanding, the inability to hear or be heard, back to life. All that remained of what was gone, we are thrusting it into a future that is before its time.
“I loved you.” — her
“I loved you. And I loved her.” — him
“I love you, only you. I can only love one.” — her
“I receive your love it is powerful. I can feel its power.” — him
“Hold it for me as I have held it for you.” — him
“But what about her?” — her
Walls crumble. Castles with towers built into the clouds fall.
All the details that were sculpted so beautifully into the hardened soil, it cracks and then it begins to melt.
We can not release the dusty stones that were once the structures we built of art, vulnerability, hopes, smiles, transparency, visions of tomorrows, and missed truths.
Can houses be built upon foundations so fragile? I cant stop asking myself.
I try and pour more.
“I love you.” — him
“We are experiencing such a beautiful life together, right now. “ — him
“Look at us. “ — him
“And while I’ve loved you, I’ve also loved her. There is nothing for us to be ashamed of. It’s all so amazing.“ — him
“If only we could all love each other, allowing ourselves to be found in the beauty that we have.” — him
She stares at me, and so they all do, as if trying to decipher the answers by mixing the colours in my eyes.
We’ve failed before, we don't have to fail again. We are all here for a reason, I say.
They turn their gaze away from me. It is as if she is searching for a way. I can not tell if it is a way out they are looking for, or if they just don’t want to be seen.
They vanish when I awaken.
And then they return again when I fall asleep the next night.
While I sleep, I smell them, they are the scents of spring in Eswatini. I can hear their canary angelic voices whispering into my ears, like the winds of Addis Ababa. I can feel their hands run against my body, caressing my arms like the fishing boats off the shores of Zanzibar.
Each night I plead for a chance.
“Let us just try. Please.” — him
“We can make it different this time. “ — him
Yet, every day when I awaken, she is gone. They are all gone…
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Peace. Anwar Bey here. I did not use A.I. to write these moments. I did access A.I. to generate these visuals — Midjourney — it is so fun.
These moments, when they enter my mind they thrash about making as much noise as possible. They cause me to feel an urge to splash all I can, onto the page like paint. The writing completes itself. The A.I. generated visuals afford me the opportunity to get it all out in a way that feels complete, in a way that I feel like you can understand, see, feel and perhaps get lost and then found in. Thank you for reading. It feels good to just let it out.
Anwar is creator/ writer/ director of PLASMAworlds — a BIPOC sci-fi action adventure storyworld. You can grab the first few issues of the latest from PLASMAworlds here — https://plasmaworlds.myshopify.com/products/woldu-book-bundle-zero-to-five-1-6
