"Yesterday, I Dreamed of You Again"

Yesterday, I dreamed of you again.

And this time… you stayed.

You were sitting on the porch — barefoot, coffee in hand, wearing that sweater I could never bring myself to donate. The one with the fraying cuffs and that faint trace of your cologne I can still catch if I hold it close enough. The sky behind you was that soft purple of early morning, and the breeze smelled like lavender — and something else I can’t describe. Maybe comfort. Maybe grief.

You didn’t speak at first.

Just smiled. Like you had been waiting.

Like no time had passed at all.

I didn’t ask why you were there.

I didn’t dare.

Dreams are fragile things, and I was terrified that if I moved too quickly, the moment would dissolve, like fog touched by sun.

Do you remember how you used to hum when you read?

A quiet tune, barely audible — like your soul trying to speak through your lips. You did that in the dream, too. Humming gently as your fingers turned the pages of a book that looked too worn to be real. Like it had been loved a thousand times. I sat beside you, and the wood of the porch felt warm beneath my palms, like the sun had already been there before we arrived.

We didn’t speak.

Not right away.

But that was enough. It had always been enough for us — the quiet was never empty when you were near.

I used to think silence was a void.

Now I know: silence can be sacred.

Silence, with you, was peace.

Then you looked at me.

God, I had forgotten the way your eyes softened when you were about to say something important — how the world seemed to still, how even the wind paused to listen.

You said, “You don’t have to carry all of it.”

And I didn’t ask what you meant.

Because I knew.

The guilt.

The unanswered questions.

The memories I pick apart like tangled threads, trying to find the moment — the exact moment — when everything changed. The moments I play like a broken record, hoping the ending might shift if I listen just right. You knew I wore them like armor. Like shackles. Like I believed the weight made the love more real.

You reached for my hand.

And I felt it.

Warm. Solid. Real.

That’s the thing about dreams — touch almost never comes.

But this… this felt like the world stopped spinning just to let me remember what it was like to feel loved without pain woven into every thread.

“I’m okay,” you said.

Soft. Certain.

And I wanted to believe you.

God, I still do.

Because believing you're okay is easier than imagining the thousand things we never got to do. Easier than sitting in the spaces your absence hollowed out — the half-empty mug, the unopened birthday card, the light that never turns on. Easier than wondering if I missed something. If I could have changed something. If I should’ve known.

Then, as dreams do, it shifted.

You stood.

Walked toward the edge of the yard where the fog curled like the edge of another world.

But this time, you didn’t vanish.

You turned back.

Smiled.

And then — I woke up.

The sun was just beginning to break through the clouds.

That soft morning light you always loved was slipping in through the curtains.

Your sweater was still hanging on the hook by the door, just where I left it.

Your favorite book still sat on the shelf, dog-eared, waiting.

And for a brief moment, I swear — the air still smelled like lavender.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long while.

Not crying.

Not speaking.

Just… existing.

Letting the dream wash over me like rain after drought. Letting it soak into all the dry, quiet places I’d tried so hard to ignore.

Yesterday, I dreamed of you again.

And this time, you stayed.

Not forever.

Not even for long.

But long enough.

Long enough to remind me that love doesn’t vanish when breath does.

That your laugh still lives in these walls, if I listen hard enough.

That healing doesn’t mean forgetting — it just means remembering without falling apart.

So today, I made coffee for two.

I sat on the porch wrapped in your sweater.

And I read your favorite chapter out loud — the one you always stopped at just to reread a single sentence again and again.

And when the breeze passed through the trees,

carrying the scent of something familiar and kind,

I closed my eyes…

And I swear —

I heard you humming.