Dream

 Sometimes you come in my dreams.

Sometimes they are coloured brightly with the colour that is you.

You make the bad ones a little less worse and the good ones a little more better.

You don’t come to my rescue when I’m taken hostage.

You just stand at the edges, where the lines between the two spheres blur and encourage me to do so myself.

You don’t treat me like I’m made of glass.

You walk up to me and encourage me to reinforce myself, so that even if I fall, I won’t shatter.

You don’t untie my bonds when I’m tied up and alone.

You untie my soul when it is trapped within itself.

You don’t save me.

You don’t have to.

You dream me a future where I can save myself.

And when I wake up, on occasion. 

When I can’t escape, can’t fight against the demons in my head that suffocate, you comfort me.

You make sure that I survive.

So that I can thrive the next time.

They won’t disappear. The nightmares. 

But you make me strong enough to bear them.

Even when the monsters morph and harden, when they become more real.

When every punch leaves me gasping in the middle of the night.

When every touch seems to burn my skin.

You dream for me.

You dream for me a world where our skin is thick and our lungs full and where our mind is not plagued by itself. 

You dream me a world where light emerges from my fingertips to dispel the darkness.

You dream me a world where the shadows don’t flick-flick-flicker, where they don’t loom, where they don’t suffocate.

You dream me a world where shadows are just that, shadows.

And they can’t dim the light.

Sometimes you come in my dreams.

Sometimes my mind twists your presence, your being.

Sometimes I dream that you are the one whose hands are around my neck.

I don’t wake up gasping those times.

I don’t wake up thrashing those times.

I don’t wake up screaming those times.

Because those times I know, they were just dreams.