I awake to the early morning rain - red and chilly. In my dream someone was calling me. Someone who had no face. Faceless. Featureless. Yet, I knew she was beautiful. She was calling me. Yes, I heard her. The telephone ringing in the background.

I can hear her breathing through the receiver set of my telephone. Regular. Calm. Deep. Unhurried. Sounds sexy. But I would rather go back to my bed and try to sleep through my headache.

"Are you the girl in my dream?" I ask.

"If only," she says, "I can be someone's dream girl. It is nice to have men thinking of me. Even if they are having sex with another girl. Even if they are masturbating. I don't mind."

It was in a room without walls and without ceiling where we shared our warmth on a couch lying together.

"What if I could only love you for a day?"

"Why?" she asked. "Why?"

I tapped my heart.

"There is a certain wildness in here, that cannot survive the civilities, the trivialities and responsibilities of formal love and conventional marriage. Perhaps it isn't to be."

She rested her head on my shoulder.

"I can kiss you in all the places that hurt; the wounds bleeding, the wounds bled and dried, the wounds over wounds, the new scars, the old scars, the scars reopened."

She traced the shape of my lips with her fingers.

I pecked her on her cheeks and tasted her tears. She said it hurts less. But she cried more.

After a little while, she spoke. "I know you love me. Thank you."

"Is it a silly name I have?" she asked.

I considered it for a moment. "No. It's beautiful. It's real and true."

"Why?"

I shrugged and gave my boyish smile.

She frowned for a moment. Finally. Laughed. "You talk like this often?"

Her eyes were twinkling when she asked the question. Alive. Bubbling.

I shrugged again. While she laughed again. Happily. And she tugged my heart. A pang. Of which I could not explain. And I thought I felt rather old.

You left me all your money. Your everything. I don’t want them. Don’t want any.
You left me everything. His dirty stain. You’re stained. You left the stain on me. The dirty stain on me. That no soap. No detergent. No sex or fucks can get it out. It just gets a little fainter.


Yet tomorrow you will forget everything. You will be living innocently again in a series of happy stories with no sad endings, and you will not know why.


Does it matter to anyone? Does it matter to you? You’ve never seen what I’ve seen anyway. I’ve not seen what you’ve seen anyway. Nothing’s discovered. No one’s hurt. No hurt. Because you’ve forgotten everything. Until someone reads your diary. Again. And again. And again. And again.


So I run. Run. And I have been running. Running from places that remind me of you. Places that remind me of her. Running from the things that remind me of her. Running from you. Just looking ahead always, and running. Running till I have nowhere to run from myself. My memories.


Because there is love, there is pain. I may be dead, but I’m still hurting.
We stopped, looking out at the sea. We stared at each other. And we were so quiet. We could almost hear each other’s heart beating. The pain each heart beat brought.

The pain. The pain. The pain.

Then she sighed, leaned back, and started fiddling with her iPhone. And I fired up another cigarette.




It’s almost the morning.