I started out at a run, pacing myself and enjoying the great blue sky around me. I felt the sand and water beneath my feet and the heard scratching of the shells against the rocks. There was laughing somewhere behind me. It must have been a kid playing in the sand. He was beside me then smiling, keeping me company when I began to feel tired. I began to drift away from the concentration of the running and when I got to the pier I was drinking water. The water was cool and tasted like the air right before it rained. I looked around and I saw no clouds, just bright twinkling stars above me, keeping the pier lit with a hazy glow. I liked to play connect the dots with those stars, and the freckles on his face. Again he was there, where had he been at the last place, with all the water? It didn’t matter. Lying on our backs on that trampoline, in the middle of the night, hearing the cheering of a faraway game that brutes and cavemen play, the time was slowing and making the moment last a lifetime.

The haze around my memory and mind grew and I drifted into waves and the splashing of lights in my vision. Scarlet, turquoise, emerald and amber, all of these lights reflected a shown from above me. The colors were so brilliant and vibrant the shown like colors from another world. They flowed like music and the tones, harmonies and bass mixed to form colors that weren’t really colors at all, but words. Words on a chalkboard that scratched at my brain as if they were wild beasts trapped in cage two sizes too small. Burning the words in my head like a fire burned scars of pain and darkness on people’s memories. “You lost it; I told you that you’d lose it. You’ve failed. I told you that you can never not do something, that you can’t bury things away”. The burning uneasiness fades but the marks remain dark spots in the images in front of me.

A blue surrounds me, relaxing me, cool to my skin and I realize someone has their arms wrapped around me. “Where were you? I lost it and you weren’t there. What were you doing?” I asked him curiously. The panic began to rise; a scratching at my eyes started to take over my thoughts. The cold rush of water woke me from the haze that had begun to sink over my conscious. As I came up for breath his back was turned walking toward another person. I wanted to yell but the buzzer went off and I had to sprint to the other end of the pool, to stop the person from scoring on my team. But looking around I didn’t know who my team was. There were people in the same color as me, yelling for a pass, swimming to help me. But were they on my team? I looked up at the stands, so far above me, looking down upon me, like they were judging me. I began to lose my way and swim circles in the waves and emptiness of the ocean around me. Alone. Utterly alone. Black, murky water surrounded me making it impossible for me so see below me ahead of me, around me. No light reflected, only darkness reflected more darkness.

The boat that came up beside me was short enough for me to climb onto, with helping hands of a few. And off we went to the clear blue sandbar that stretched along the side of the lake, never ending. We sat there watching the sun rise, haze leaving my mind; the marks that burned my eyes were being wiped away with every passing moment. He was there again, he wrapped his arms so tightly around me that he held me to the ground and didn’t let me float away into the morning sky and fall back in the water. There we stayed for, again, what seemed like a lifetime. On the boat we drifted through memories and regrets of the past few years. What could have been said or done to make things easier. It was like an old movie that would skip through time and leave you hanging after someone said “What if”. We paused on one memory, at a lake, clearer and bluer than the one were on. The pier stretched out to the middle and you could see the rocks and fish at the bottom of this wondrous lake.
There, in the midst of his arms and with my friends around me I was happy, in fact stress free, even if just for a moment. I heard thuds than and the image began to fade. I tried to hold on, tried not to drift and fade with it, but I couldn’t. I opened my eyes and fallowed the blue glow to its source. The video had shut off after being left idle for so long. I looked at the green clock on the wall and it read 10:45 PM. I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to have to drive home alone in my red 2001 Cadillac Eldorado. I wanted someone to be next to me in that seat, someone I trusted. But it wouldn’t happen. I still felt the burning of salty water on my face and could have traced the path down cheeks. He held me tighter than, realizing I had woken up because I twitched. I knew my eyes were deep blue because that it what happens when I cry. My eyes told him everything I couldn’t say because I couldn’t speak. He knew, better than anyone what my biggest fear was, what he didn’t know was that he was the only person that had ever truly seen it become a reality. He told me good night and I drove home. I feel asleep to the pitter-patter of rain on my window and this time there was no scratching in my mind, only peace. I was finally able to hold onto the lasting moment of peace I felt in my dream.