He guessed, when he had fully wakened, and the dream’s scenery had begun to melt into the familiar features of his bedroom, that while she had been a major figure in the story, still it was a story, and it was only his.

The impulse was to tell it, of course, as though it had been shared: there are stories where two lay their heads to sleep in separate houses, on separate pillows, but dream as though the pillow were only one, connected by an ethereal thread of sameness or desire. There are stories as well, where two lay their bodies in a single bed, heads on a single pillow, but their spirits are so scattered to opposing winds that, even searching, even calling, they could not hear a whisper of one another. Story or fact.

The impulse was to reach out, to remind her of the dream-visit she might have made, as though memory might startle a feeling which had not yet been discovered, or had gone dormant; might water it like a flower which, governed by the nature of earth and rain, would happily be compelled to open. As though, roused by the sun’s first rays in the morning window, he might lean over and with a quiet hand touch her, whisper “wake up, love” in similar invitation. The hand that reaches out in dream and finds a heart; the hand that reaches out in fact, in echo and in half-sleep, catches at air, and wonders.

“Do we build dreams with another, or do we build alone, imagine we are one? Was she there, or wasn’t she? Was it my hope that remembered her, my fear that made her disappear?” The questions didn’t make a sound; rather, took the form of a quiet ache.

He held the dream gently in his arms, as with the sunrise it softly dissolved.

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