Waking broken light. Barren the space, black sheets. Trembling vertical blinds. A cosmos illuminated, the silent swirling translucent dust, every where, but only visible there in those thrusting bars of white light. Moving over and through a sound, sounds on sounds, a wobbling voice, fluttering paper, and underneath it all a monotone, mechanical scratching.
The dream slipped away from him, tide receding his waking mind unveiled by its departure. His breath was a deep one, akin in sound to the first breath upon breaking the water.
She liked to sleep, the calm. And she awoke each morning reborn. She watched him awaken, the stuttering opening of his eyes. In that moment he did not look reborn she thought, he looked marooned. She put her hand, the flat of her palm to his chest. She did not know why she still did it, reaching out to feel it. It was always absent- when he woke, when he slept, after the collapse of their bodies that occurred in between. Her strange habit and his nonparticipating role in it, her hand searching for the beat of his heart.
'How did you sleep?' she closed her eyes to await the roll of his rumbling voice over her.
'I dreamt' She knew, only when dreaming was he still in his sleep.
Her voice, he thought, was a cat stretching as she asked 'Of what?' He would have lied, natural inclined to avoid combustive conversation, and believing that truth had no business in a morning bed. But he was denied the chance. Before he could he heard her voice again, 'Of whom?'
She did not know why she had extended her inquiry, the second question simply tumbled out of her mouth. Still he could have lied, but he mistook the inertia of her words for intuition.
He tried to remember who it was it he had been dreaming about. He knew her name, it stood steadfast, erect in his mind like a memorial column, a history, their history, storied, wrapping around the syllables of her name. But he could not see her when he thought of her. He had been able to in his dream, but the image, her likeness, had been pull away with the movement of the dreaming waters, the exposing of being awoken.
'A ghost', he responded.
She knew all of his ghosts, reluctant or willing, were women. She was not surprised, simply curious, and so asked who she was. He answered. She thought there was something quite odd in the way he said her name, the way it came out of his mouth, forced, the sounds seemed distant to the him. He said her name like one says the name of ancient places one knows of but has never seen, like places that exist now only in the stasis of history passed.
'Why is she a ghost?'
He ran a heavy hand over his face, his callouses catching on the his skin. She knew this look, this movement of the hand, the veil behind which his eyes would fall, and the churning that would go on in his mind as he sought the words he wanted.
Eventually, 'I can't see her. When I think of her there's no picture, no image to go with the name. I know I knew her, that I had known her well. But I can't remember her.' Those words caught in the minute illuminated debris - as it did, in the air as if it were being kept afloat by the condemning viscous whirl of the ceiling fan. She didn't understand, or she understood but couldn't believe. She could still remember them all, intimate companions. She could still remember the most casual of companions, a friend from a summer camp when she was a child, the look on her first grade teacher's face when she was surprised. She could not imagine not being able to remember someone.
He felt her look at him, peer, squint as if to help the flawed organ focus. He knew she was bothered, he could feel it come off her bare skin, a silent buzz, not bothered simply stirred from her complacent morning centeredness.
'You would know her if you saw her right?' she asked.
'Of course,' he responded and continued through the first sounds of the question blossoming within her,' but knowing isn't remembering'
In that moment she thought she felt it, his heart but it could have been the residue of some far off thunder.
'I think' he began but she cut him off 'Stop, I don't...' trailed off and he did. She rolled over so she could not see the window, closed her eyes, and forced her self to remember.
