Let's call this Love

The voices in my head are insanely loud these days. So loud that I can’t hear myself. This inability to hear myself at times are the best of times and the worst of times. I like it because I am able to fool myself and believe almost anything I want. I am able to dream. I am able to see her.
She first appeared after I had passed out from drinking too much. I had just won a prize for a poem in the local newspaper. The poem was about a boy who wanted to commit suicide. He walked everyday to a cliff nearby, stood at the edge of the cliff, but could never take the last step to an eternal fall. One day while coming back from the cliff a truck hit him and he died.

*
I was standing at the same cliff of my poem. I saw her on the other edge of that horizon. At the actual suicide point. Her gaze was fixed into the infinite expanse of that awakening flora. The morning breeze played with her hair and curled below her ear. Her figure stirred and rocked back and forth.
“Beautiful view. No wonder people want to jump the moment they see this.” She didn’t move. “It has the reputation of being a suicide point. It has taken the lives of more than a dozen people. I guess they are right. Beauty can kill you.” She looked at me for the first time after several minutes.
“It’s not true. If you are really looking at this, with all the heart in you, you can’t kill yourself. You won’t be able to see it again then.”
“You come here often? What place is this?
“I don’t know. It looks familiar.”
“Do you know you have a very incendiary aura?” Smiles. “It’s like a spark runs rapidly through my blood every time you look at me. You know the kind when you click the kitchen lighter on your finger.”
*
“And then what?”
“Then I woke up.”
“Was he good looking?”
“I don’t remember. I just have that feeling of being possessed by some whispers in my head that keep repeating themselves over and over. Incendiary. I clearly remember that word. I have never seen a dream in which I’m conversing. Dreams are almost always without any sound. Isn’t it? You remember colors, maybe a face more clearly, a déjà vu at some situation, but not a sound.”

*
“So you told him about our kiss?”
“Of course.”
“And how did you describe it?”
“I told him that you kiss like an adolescent.”
“Breaks my heart.” She started laughing.
I kissed her on her laughing lips. She laughed more. The car raced in the dark. There was no light. Only her laughter echoed on that empty highway. She was wearing something black.. Again. Something shone on her finger.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it before. I can hardly feel its weight. It’s like inside the skin. Your eyes look bluer. What’s happening to us?”

*
“What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think anything is wrong?”
“You are singing. There is a spring in your step. You have stopped whining about not being able to write.”
“Oh come on. I sing all the time.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve met someone. And I’m not going to say anymore than that.”
“So typical.”
“No, you won’t understand.”

*
“Why didn’t you tell her? She was wearing a very blazing blue.
“She would’ve laughed like crazy and asked me to take some medication. And I was afraid.”
“Why?”
“What if this spell breaks?”
“You cannot control it. It’ll last as long as it has to last.”
“I don’t want this to end. Hey, your wrist is shinier than the last time.”
“Yeah I saw it. And your eyes are almost like they had been painted.”
“This is a very nice place.”
“This reminds me of a painting from childhood. It had this exact similar setting. A road amongst tall trees lined on both sides.”
“There are dozens of paintings like that.”
“Can you recall when you arrived here?”
“No. You?” I shook my head.

*
“I like his agitation within. I can feel it in almost everything he does.”
“And you guys did it?”
“I think we did. I don’t remember the details but I remember us running trying to find a proper place and then his eyes trying to take me all in one go. He doesn’t looks away for even once. Even when I’m not looking at him I can fee his eyes on me.”
“I’m so jealous of you. Happens every time you go to sleep?”
“Somewhere in the last hours of sleep. Around dawn. I think he is a writer. He talks like a poet.”

*
…And they ran for six days and nights and slept on all fours at the crack of dawn in that vast jungle.
“It’s a beautiful story. You write beautifully.”
“I think I’m one dimensional. Limited.”
We had water all around us today. A fog was settling in. She was wrapped in a white satin gown.
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did.”
“You are probably sleeping with him right now?”
“I think so. Why do you look upset?”
“I’m not upset. I don’t understand you.”
“You are also in a relationship?”
“Not anymore.”
“When?”
“Last night. I called her by your name.” Laughs.
“I’m not in a laughing kind of mood.” Laughs more.

*
“I don’t believe this. You are telling me that you dream about the same girl every night in your dreams. You guys go on drives, kiss, and talk like forever.”
“Why is this so hard to believe? Isn't every relationship a dream before you say "I love you"? And what happens to that dream after that? Have you seen such calm on my face before. I noticed it this morning in the mirror.”
“And what about us?”

*
“And then?”
“She said I was impossible”.
“And?”
“And that I’m the biggest fool to be in love with a dream.”
“And what did you say?”
“Aren’t we all. She didn’t know that.”
“What?”
“That I wasn’t in love with her.”
“So how will this end?”
“I’m thinking about having one last sleep.”
*
“So he’ll kill himself?”
“That’s what he said.”
“And you’ll kill yourself too?”
“He said I don’t have to if I don’t want to. He’s the one choosing a dream. I might have second thoughts about it. And that’s alright with him.”
“So you are not going to.”
“I cannot decide.”
“Why is the idea so appealing? I mean think about it. We have been together for three years. I know it’s not an out of the world thing but we are good together. And even if you don’t want to live with me anymore, that’s fine. But this is madness.”

*
The breeze was never more perfect. Each gust filled me with new flavors of life. What does one call it? The setting was like a movie set. I was standing at the end of the world. With all the heart in me, I was here. I had emptied the entire bottle of my sleeping pills. There was not a trace of any weight left in me. This was not a dream. This was something else. And then I saw her walking towards me. And the life after life was about to begin. But she didn’t look happy. She was wearing red today. My favorite color.

*
“Where am I?”
“You were in a coma for 45 minutes.” A doctor said to me.
“Who brought me here?”
“Your landlord saw your body through the window.” My landlord was standing right next to the doc smiling.
I slept again. And again. And again. But there was no dream. There was no her.
And then one day I saw her. It was someone who could’ve been her. She was sitting in a park. It was not her face. It was her hand. She was playing with something. It was a ring in her finger. The one that was so indecipherable in my dreams.
She lifted her head, turned around, looked at me for a second, and then looked away.