“Mariah! Mariah!”
The wind whipped my dark hair and long, white nightgown about my body as I turned around. There was a girl, a child, standing at the edge of the ocean, covered in seaweed. The moon shone down on us from its place in the sky, but it did nothing to illuminate the situation for me.
“What do you want?” I trembled.
The girl extended one wet, slender arm. Something was in her hand. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that whatever it was, it was more dazzling than the stars and far more terrible than the darkest spaces between them.
“You dropped your heart in the sand.” The girl’s soft words were barely audible over the roar of the ocean, “I rinsed it off for you.”
~~~
Beep… Beep…
The water stain on the ceiling above my bed came into focus as I opened my eyes. An alarm clock beeped loudly in the background. I had overslept for 23 minutes. How did I manage to sleep through that wretched noise for so long? I flicked the button of my alarm clock to the off position to end the persistent beeping.
Have you ever felt trapped in a dream? I’ve been having the same dream for the last twenty years. The scene is a wide stretch of beach at night, but the elements of the environment are never consistent. Sometimes it’s low tide, and jagged rocks are exposed in the sand. Sometimes the water is unnaturally still and continues uninterrupted into the distance until its edges blend with the dark, night sky. Other times, like last night, the water rages with waves that tear through space before crashing back down. The little girl is the real constant of the dream. In the end, she always comes. She rises from the ocean, from the dark places where the unknown lurks beyond our reach. She is always the same: pale, wet, urgently calling to me. She is four years old, and she hasn’t grown at all since she first came to me while I slept.
The terrazzo floor was cold against my bare feet as I climbed out of bed. I fixed the pillows and made the sheets. I once tried to share my dream with a therapist. I sat in his office on a plush, leather armchair, but every time I opened my mouth, the wrong words rolled off my tongue. I willed them to come out honestly, to convey outwardly that which I felt inside. I tried to do it vocally, but it came out chemically instead. Have you ever cried in an expensive, leather armchair in the office of a therapist?
~~~
“Why are you getting tears?” The therapist asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know or you don’t know what to say?”
“I just don’t know.” I said softly as I dried my cheeks with a tissue.
~~~
I removed the cloth hand towel from my face and looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My teeth were brushed and my face was washed. I looked very composed. I turned on the faucet of my shower. It usually took a minute for the water to come out hot, and I took off my clothes in front of the mirror while I waited. The scars on my body were faded now, but I could still feel the subtle changes in texture along the surface of my skin. For a while, I simply stood there like that. Then my twin in the mirror began to blur as she was covered by steam that condensed on the cold, glass surface. I followed suit a moment later, stepping into the shower. The water poured out of the faucet, enveloping my body in warmth, rinsing the leftover salt from last night’s perspiration from my skin.
