“Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones.
You look at him as you sip on the black coffee. It tastes bland in your mouth; nothing but hot water with a hint of the bitter taste that doesn’t hit where it's supposed to. With your eyes, you trace patterns on the furrow lines over his eyebrows. And before you know it, your fingers have reached out to touch his forehead.
The second your fingers make contact with his skin, you watch in amazement how his brows smoothen down, his eyes shifting towards you from the screen in his hand. A soft smile forms on his lips while looking at you, and you feel so cliched, because you feel the wind picking up speed around you both, and you watch him smile under falling leaves like you are some main character from a trashy rom-com.
Sometimes you wonder about how the future will be for you both. The certain uncertainty you both have harboured throughout your life never really gives you any solid pictures in your head. But you see them in fragments. With his unruly hair, he is sometimes in a cottage in some forest, sometimes in a small one-bedroomed box apartment in the heart of a small town. Sometimes you see kids running around. Sometimes you see sipping tea together while watching the rain drizzle down in solitude. The only thing that's common about these fragmented pictures is that it has him with you in every moment. Whether it's helping you make a cake in the kitchen with flour smeared cheeks, or sleeping soundly in your bed as you bring him his morning coffee; you just see him. The vividness of these fragments dumbfounds you, and every time, you feel breathless with a euphoric sensation in your lungs.
When the wind hits your face as you roam around the city, under sodium lights and sunlight both, you feel a certain sense of peace within you. With him, there is never a clear destination in mind. There are no drawn-out plans or fixed schedules, and you see yourself falling in love with this reckless, almost mindless way of living, where the only thing you really do is live, and nothing else.
Out of all the extravagant things you do, your most favourite thing to do with him is to smoke under trees in some forest with no one around in miles. With tea in one hand and a cigarette in another, you roam around the wilderness, watching how leaves fall from trees, hearing the unknown birds sing all around you. These are small things, but they make you more happy than you’ve ever been.
Happiness; you always had this grand idea about what it is in your head. Society and your family brought you up that way. Taught you the general achievements you need to gain to be happy. A stable job, a stable life, good grades, a big house and a big fat salary. ”This is the perfect formula for happiness,” they said.
But now, when you look at him, you see all of those ideologies nailed within you shatter into glacier particles. Because now, happiness seems to reside in a dim-lit cigarette under the scorching summer sun. It resides in long bus rides towards the countryside in early mornings, and long tired, sleepless nights spent in good company. Happiness bursts out from the faint smile on his face, and it blooms like a flower within you as you see the world in a different light for the first time with the help of his eyes.
Dreaming, doesn't feel like an unrealistic pass time anymore. So now you dream, dream and dream, and within these dreams, you learn, to live, and to breathe once again.
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist.
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