Meandering

Did you dream?

The cosmic touch of madness must have found you at some point, slipped into your bedroom, and pried open your thoughts in search of that cream-filled center of your soul. You must remember that electric touch. The thing that jolted through you.

Don't you remember?

It hooked its talons behind your eyelids and yanked, dragging you upright in your bed. I can remember how you gasped. How you sucked in the dark air of night like it could nourish you. It drove the terror deeper. It pushed you into the arms of something wicked beyond the depths of a dream.

Was it a dream?

I've wondered now if it wasn't something more. If it wasn't some...great fracturing of the soul inside of you. Some nights I wake to a room doused in red lights and geometric shapes and you. Sitting there. Upright in the darkness, hands extended overhead, mouth open.

Are you dreaming?

When that space seizes you, I want to know where you go. I want to know what drives the hollow look in your blown pupils or the terror in your open lips. I want to know what makes your skin so hot. I want to slip inside your mind like whatever madness touched you and meet your soul.

Is this a dream?

Surely, it would be a difficult thing to live only inside the walls of the unreal.

Have I ever met you?

That can't be possible. You are more than a moving shadow in my memory. I can feel the warmth of you pressed against my skin. I can remember the taste of your apple pies. But still, I have not known you the way this darkness knows you. Maybe this isn't real after all. Maybe the edges are fogged with sleep.

Am I dreaming?