Sweet Dreams

You step out the front door and look up. The stars are bright tonight and you can easily distinguish each from the next. The only sounds are your feet scratching along the cement and the crickets scattered throughout the bushes. You slip your hand into your pocket. It’s still there. You slide out the stolen cigarette; it’s bent and the tobacco has started to slip out. You straighten it as well as you can and reach for a match. Your hand shelters the little flame as the cigarette sparks to life. You breath in the smoke, feeling instantly calm as it spins within you. You breathe out, watch the smoke fade. You lick your lips like she told you to. Vanilla. 1

They’re called “sweet dreams,” she said. Lick your lips after the first drag. That was just before you left. You decide that it must have been at least one in the morning, maybe even two. You were tired and wanted to stay but it was time to go. You understood that and so did she. It didn’t matter how many hours you spent together up until that point because everything ends eventually. And sometimes eventually comes too soon. But you understood that. Yes, both of you did. 2

But before that, before you got up from the curb by the 7-11, things were different. Her love, your love, was eternal. “Eventually” was far away and didn’t seem to approach with any haste. Each kiss was slow and gentle. Nobody’s tongues forced forward awkwardly, but instead your lips just melted into hers, your mouths one, your bodies pressed together. Breasts against breasts, soft stomachs aligned. Hands on backs and hips and knees between thighs, each movement soft in its own way, unexpected yet inevitable. 3

You take another drag and rewind a little further. Driving backwards from your town to hers, smoking a cigarette backwards so that each chunk of ash flies back to its source and rewraps itself in clean vanilla scented paper. The filter on your cigarette whitens, you and she rise from the curb, walk back up the stairs to her bedroom. You take your clothes off, and then put them back on. You walk back down the stairs and down the street, return to her friends. You are all in the park again, watching candles un-melt and marshmallows un-burn. You all take back your truths and dares and swallow your laughs. The sun is un-setting and you are racing backwards through the drugstore, putting back chocolate bars and graham crackers and marshmallows. You are all sitting by the creek. The crickets stop chirping. The man under the bridge take the weed out of his pipe and stuffs it back into a little bag. You are un-crossing the creek, jumping backwards onto rocks. You and she are climbing backwards up the hill; you are all listening to a swing band play backwards in the park. The music swims out of your ears and back into the instruments, then back into the musicians’ lungs and out their noses and out of their brains. You are saying goodbye to her friends, slipping your hand back into hers and flying back down the street to the pizza parlor. You spit your pizza back onto the plate, take it up front, and are handed back your money. You are shuffling backwards into the hot summer air, hand in hand with the only girl that knows you. You are reforming one more cigarette, a normal one this time. You are kissing hello. You are climbing back into your car and soaring down the freeway. The freeway speeds in front of you and suddenly your are returning your driver’s license, forgetting algebra, and watching all of your letters and numbers slip from your head. You are back in the womb, you are a fetus. You are a pile of cells. You are a sperm and egg. You are nothing. Your parents are nothing and their parents are nothing and their parents are nothing.4

Everything is gone now. You have skipped back to the beginning of time. You close your eyes and listen to the first real silence you have ever heard. She’s gone too. But today you are just a soul. Waiting for the right moment to be born, to buy a car, to meet a girl, to fall in love, to spend a night as one person. To drive back home and smoke that final cigarette. To rediscover the peace that you’ve already found here, at the beginning of it all. And when you get there, you will understand that all of it, all the kisses and daydreams and hellos and goodbyes will come to an end. You will understand this and so will she. It won’t matter how many hours you spent together up until this point because everything ends eventually. And sometimes eventually comes too soon. But you understand that. Yes, both of you do.
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