☽

a delicate dance. an orchestrated circus act. I put on my best. the one the crowd likes. I stand in front of the mirror until it doesn't look like I've been crying my whole life. he doesn't stand up to greet me. I don't look at him enough to know if he's looking at me. I study the menu like I don't know that I'm going to order a well vodka soda tall with lime. the conversation dances between music and what type of partner we've been in the past. what type of partner we hope to be in the future. I laugh at his jokes. I wonder if he's a real artist or just a man who says he is.

he never compliments me, except to say: you sound like a great mother. you're really self aware. but I want to know: do you think I'm pretty? do I look like the type of girl you could wake up next to every day? I try to imagine his arms around me. the arms he keeps on his side of the booth that never venture anywhere close to mine. maybe there is still a veil through which I see other men. or don't see them. can't see them.

he hugged me goodbye and it was the first time I'd felt nothing in awhile.

The thing about dreams is that names aren’t important. Men have reserved many dreams for late night calls with strangers like me. Dreams of being lighthouse keepers and inherently different men in all the ways that count. I don’t remember their names now, but I remember the important things. Sometimes I dream with them. I picture them without a face, but somehow bearded, somehow harried and unkempt from the weather and chosen solitude. Without reality to ground them, they remain full of possibility, almost floating off the rocks of the island where they keep the light for our illusory fishermen.

In my dream of his dream, I told him I’d come over in a small fishing boat. Fought the waves and the gulls to bring him a pie I’d somehow kept warm. In my dream of his dream, we ate together in the belly of the lighthouse. At a modest table normally reserved just for him.