Makes you want to run away and then back

Pictures were strewn on the floor, colored and alive. We were in black and white so alike the way we really are, they way we see you and I. There were people all around us, they way they always are. They were asleep, as asleep as they are all the time.

The room was gray with four walls, a door and a missing ceiling. In place of it was the starry sky, just enough illumination for your face, our faces.

I am lost as I always am whenever I talk to you, whenever I talk to anyone. You were trying to tell me something and as usual I do not understand. You took one of the pictures on the floor and showed them to me. I figured you were trying to prove a point. I wasn’t really paying attention until I noticed the pictures you were laying out in front of me. Pictures I have never seen before. But they were of you and me. Something was strange about those photos… they seemed to be moving in slow motion. Oh, laughter, I can hear laughter.

The pictures were in full color, moving and laughing. I know, though I don’t know how, that that was us laughing. I sense happiness in those pictures. Who took them? Why wasn’t I aware?

I really don’t understand what you were trying to tell me. I guess you sensed it as furrows deepened in my forehead. You made them disappear with the gentle touch of your air. And I felt I somehow understood. For the first time, I understood.

I stood up and reached for the door. I was overwhelmed with what dawned on me as I stared at those pictures on the floor. I opened the door and found another gray room. Your alter ego was there. I asked what the bother is since it’s too late to be turning on the stove. Milk. Again, I was lost and did not understand.

Dreams are usually on a grayscale. Blurry and foggy. Indistinct voices and ungraspable messages. Seldom to dreams come in full color, alive and surprisingly happy.

Dreams, they only amuse you for a few moments. The smiles last for a few moments upon waking. But the realization gets stuck all your waking hours.

Great! Just when you thought your waking self will be able to live the better life your treacherous dreams creeps up on you and tells you,

“Darling, do not fool yourself. We both know the surreal untruth would be better than your reality.”