Dream Journal

He calls me in the middle of the night but I don't hear the phone ringing. I'm with my cousin in a two bedroom apartment full of shoji screens and plants in full bloom. There is no color, only splashes of brown and green. When I finally see that I've got a missed call, I'm excited. I have been waiting for his call.

I check the message that he's left but I can barely understand what he's saying. His voice cuts off and all I hear is, "Hey...I've been thinking...we should...stop...sex..call me.. 4..5...86...6886." When I start to dial his number my phone falls apart. The screen detaches and I struggle to hold it together, dialing and redialing what I think is his number. I start running through the apartment, searching for a landline and repeating the numbers so that I don't forget. My parents appear, holding a cordless phone, smiling at me. When I grab the phone and put my ear to the receiver, I can hear my brother on the other end of the line. He's wishing his ex girlfriend a happy birthday, which is today. I'm frustrated now, I'm forgetting the sound of his voice.

All of a sudden I'm in the bathroom. There is a child in the bathtub. He's sitting in warm water and I can see a light stream of yellow coming from beneath him.

"Get out of the tub!" I yell at him. I try to wash the yellow stream out of the water with the showerhead. The yellow slowly fades into light brown, then red. Then I notice that the showerhead is pointed directly at the tile wall, covered in rust. The water streaming down the wall is colored by the rust.

Flash forward, I'm walking out of the liquor store around the corner from my house. My mother is supposed to pick me up and take me to the airport. A red SUV pulls up beside me and, thinking its my mother, I hop in. But its not my mother. Its this guy I dated a couple months ago...and boy does he look good. He smiles at me and laughs. We start talking, flirting having a good "new love" moment. I'm thiniking to myself, "Dude, you dropped me. Why all of a sudden are you trying to holler again?" He puts his hand on my knee, tries to touch me in subtle ways.

Then I wake up. Its 1:30 in the morning and I've only been asleep for about an hour. I'm a little dazed, remembering the first part of my dream, unsure if it really happened or not. I've woken up from dreams like this before, confused by illusion and reality. I reach for my cellphone, just to make sure it didn't happen. Nope, no call. But I've got these butterflies in my stomach and I'm having trouble breathing.

Goddammit, I wish my dreams weren't so powerful.