I dreamt of her again this dawn. I woke myself up some time around five, with the assorted sounds of the neighborhood slowly rising back into life: car engines roared as if to announce their departures, clinks and clanks sounded from the local diner just across the street, parents and their drowsy children shook out of slumber, rubber soled shoes and rubber wheels scratched the concrete. I let this deranged symphony cradle me back into sleep like a lullaby, allowing myself to rest a little more. Evidently, these few hours I’d permitted myself were not enough to drive me back into the same deep sleep of the night — for I dreamt of her again this dawn.
I found myself in a strange place that I could not recognise; everything was spinning around and morphing into another before I could make out the directions — a whirlpool of scrambled scenes that had passed my eyes and pieces of the subconscious recollections. In the turmoil, I saw a face. The whirlpool was still turning and dragging me down into the seafloor, but I saw a face. It was one of an old friend. I saw it so clearly even though I could not make out her features — her eyebrows knitted but by each end, her lips frowned into smiles, her nose twisted and bent all over — but what I could see so clearly, still, was the warm, unmistakable eyes.
There she was. Her presence shook me even when I knew — as fully as one could in a dream — she was just an old fragment buried deep in my uneasy ocean of the mind that got caught up in the whirlpool: nothing real, nothing new.
She was wearing her hair long, just as she had worn it the day we parted. We talked and talked but her speeches just slurred into a big clump of jumbled-up consonants, abraded by my rogue waves; still, she spoke just as she had spoken the day we parted. Her visage tangled on, except for that knowing gaze. I tried to take her somewhere but we couldn’t seem to go far in my vast, open ocean. We walked and walked but we just circled back to the same, uncertain place; still, she shifted along just as she had done the day we parted.
I cannot remember, now, most words and sounds in that trance, but what I do remember, most distinctly, is my last utterance: I am not supposed to meet you back here in the depth of my memory sea but, if you allow me, I will greet you once I swim back to the shore. She did not answer or show any emotions, except for the same cold, shining eyes — just as I remembered from that one last night, the same old parting glance
I woke up again, to the present day. She was no longer there, as she had not been for a while. The last time I saw her at the store, her hair had been cut short and her shining gaze was no longer there. In fact, she did not even see me in the aisles — I did not greet her either. My eyelids struggled to tear away from sleep’s tie and I swore I could still see her, burned into the back of my retinas. As I finally faced the bright morning, I let the warmth wash sleep away; I stared into the shining sun until her cruel eyes — far removed from the long-lost affection between us — parted from mine. I woke up again, to the present day.
Author’s Note:
Dawn Dream is a semi-fictional piece inspired by my many actual dawn dreams — a reflection of the reflection of my subconscious. As an aspiring writer, I love to study how my feelings and emotions can manifest itself and, in Dawn Dream, longing and nostalgia took shape as an uncanny valley version of an old love.
Pimdao Yasoongneon | 16 | Bangkok, Thailand
