Visual by Buse Doga Ay
I’m not sure how to tell you this, but for a brief period of time I visited you in your dreams. I definitely didn’t expect to see you again, especially not in this way, so I don’t want you to think I just started haunting your nightmares on purpose. It wasn’t planned. I’m sure you’ve experienced this before - how sometimes seeing someone or even thinking about someone makes them appear in your dreams. Except this time, I was on the other end of it. You pulled me right into your brain, and I had no choice but to roll with it. I think the shock of running into you the other day is what brought all this on. I saw you aboard the train, when I was so sure you had moved across town after things ended with us. It was such a dark morning, I have no idea how I spotted you. Before I could go up to you to say something, the train came to a stop and you stepped out with that old, torn-up briefcase under your arm. I had given you a brand new one for your birthday, with your initials engraved and everything. But I understood why you didn’t use it much anymore. I’m still not sure if you noticed I was sitting a few seats behind you, but you must have, because it’s the only theory I can think of to explain what happened that night.
You were having one of those classic dreams, the one where all your teeth start falling out. You were freaking out, pulling them out of your mouth one by one. Whether I was a cavity or rot or some disease I’ve never heard of, I don’t know. All I know is that I was clinging to the root of your tooth, eating away at it. I was everywhere, a clump of bacteria slowly taking over you, pushing your tooth out of your mouth and into your hand. I was crawling across the bone, and I couldn’t even control it - before I could understand what was going on, your enamel was my worst enemy. I saw myself digging, getting bigger and wider and further, and I remember thinking, does he know I’m here? Does he know it’s me, doing this? Evidently, you would have no way of knowing, but I like to believe that our connection was strong enough for you to recognize me anywhere. I wanted to drop hints, to engrave my name onto your teeth, to shout I’m here! But it wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t see me all on your own.
I always thought that if we ever saw each other again, it would be fine. We would remember together, because after all, no one else would. No one would know what it was like, and that’s why we would have to smile and be okay and forget all the bad parts. I never thought about what would happen if I saw you, and you couldn’t see me. Navigating through your dreamscape was clumsy and confusing in all sorts of ways.
Once, I was a little capsule in a pillbox, shaking around in your pocket. I clanged every part of me against the plastic compartment until I was all dented and bruised up. At this point, you opened up the pillbox, reached down with your giant fingers, dropped me into your mouth and sent me down your gullet. You didn’t even take me with water to make my journey easier. I went down slowly, thinking it would never end, until I eventually hit the bottom and dissolved, breaking down bit by bit. I felt myself become a part of you. The only reason I was allowed within such close range is because I was indistinct from you - we couldn’t see each other become one and so it was safe.
I didn’t mind visiting you, I really didn’t. I was imperceptible, and I was good at it. I used to feel like I was always in your way, something for you to stumble over. Finally, I was something that you did to yourself. When you dreamed that you were late to work, I was the alarm clock that never rang in the morning. I liked looking at you from behind the glass, ticking away, knowing you could never tell me this was my fault. I liked being around you without worrying about what you were going to do, without worrying that I would have to take responsibility. I liked failing you, being the disappointment you always expected from yourself. When I soaked you up, I didn’t have to wonder, am I taking too much? Everything I took would return to you once you woke up. Sometimes, I would drag your fears out of you, only for them to be yanked right back.
For example, you were afraid of heights. When there was a spider in the apartment crawling across the ceiling and you wanted to remove it, place it safely outside, you got up on the kitchen chair and trembled the whole way up. You stood there, your legs shaking, and when the job was done, you would slowly put your right foot back down, toes first, and then the left. This is why the next dream wasn’t much of a surprise. You were at the edge of a cliff. At the edge of me. I felt your toes imprinted on my body, digging into me. Somehow - I don’t really know how - I was facedown. I was the rocky cliff, the earth, and everything inside it. Feeling you stand on top of me was like supporting you on my back, feeling your heels digging into my shoulder blades. Not quite seeing them, but knowing them. I felt you inhabit me and compress me at the same time, your toes chipping away at me to stay upright. Your whole body began to shake on the edge of the cliff, the fear of losing balance beginning to set in. Then, it happened. Of course it happened. You fell, slipping off of me, into the abyss. I wanted to grab your ankle, but I had no fingers to reach out for you. I watched you get smaller and smaller until you were a dot, a speck of dirt, a tiny dust ball. That’s when I woke up, I imagine because you woke up.
I got used to seeing you every night. Sometimes, I wanted to talk to you, to catch up, because that was the one thing I could never do in your dreams. There were so many things I wanted to ask you, because after all, so much had been left unanswered. I wanted to know why it had all unraveled - I deserved to know why. But I knew it was better not to go there. You would get scared, you would grab a shovel and dig me out of you until you had a hole to crawl into. After all, you were always so frightened. How could I begin to try to explain it all, when I didn’t fully understand it myself? I knew that as soon as I opened my mouth, you would talk over me, sucking in all of my air. I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t want you to expel me from your dreams just yet. You always made sure to make me feel so unwelcome, and I liked that this time, you couldn’t make me budge.
I should’ve seen this coming, but I was stubborn. After a while, it got so repetitive. You started dreaming up the same stories on a loop. I was tired of being stuck to your teeth like plaque, watching your stupid look of terror as you held all your teeth in your hands, as if we hadn’t already been here a million times. I got sick of watching you sleep through the day, looking at you from the alarm clock with boredom, the way you do when there is nothing good on TV. I couldn’t stand watching you fall off of me, shaking, slipping, as if you wouldn’t wake up anyway. Sometimes, I shuddered a little bit, making the ground shaky and unstable, just so you would fall already. I tried to rid myself of thoughts of you - I wanted you to leave me alone.
This dream was the final straw. You were with her, and I knew it before I even saw her. You were in bed, holding another body close to you, and I tried to tell myself it was bound to happen eventually. I was the alarm clock again, but this time, I wanted to ring. I wanted to yell and stop what was happening, but you were both laying still. I tried to avert my eyes, the way you’re supposed to do when you witness a moment of tenderness, but I was stuck. And I couldn’t believe you had let someone else crawl into my side of the bed, even in your unconscious. I searched for her face, just to get a glimpse of what she looked like, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Even though I already knew what she looked like from the photos I saw on your Facebook wall. But I wanted to know the way you saw her, the way you’d conjured her up in your dreams. I wanted to know what it was about her that made her appear in this space - the only space left where you and I could be left alone together. I tried to get a glimpse because I couldn’t help myself, but it was useless. You were both turned away from me.
Things changed from this point onward. I didn’t want to have any part in your life anymore, and your dreams began to reject me like a disease. The more I lost my grip on myself, the more I started to wander out of your dreams before you woke up. I had stayed with you far too long, after all. But I was so used to the way things had been that I didn’t want to be driven away from you again. You still hadn’t seen me, noticed me. I couldn’t leave just yet, I couldn’t let you go on as if nothing ever happened. One night, before I even saw you, I knew it was coming to an end. It was a different dream, this time. Being in a different setting made me feel as if the rug had been pulled out from under me. There had been an order to things, a role I had gotten used to taking on. This time, I didn’t hold any of the cards.
You were standing on top of me again, but I was face-up. I was all grass and weeds and dandelions, and you were crushing my ribcage. I could feel myself breaking, slowly turning to dust. I looked at you, standing there, blue skies behind you, and wondered why nothing was happening. You’ve never stayed in one place for too long. Why weren’t you moving? A breeze of cold air fluttered through your hair, and I felt it rush through me. It was refreshing. It was light. I tried to make the ground shake, I tried to make my own earthquake, just so you might fall and be close to me one last time.
It was a desperate last resort, one that I didn’t really expect to work. But I wanted to leave with a moment to hold onto. You didn’t fall. You almost lost your balance, so I came pretty close, but you planted your feet further into me until I couldn’t breathe anymore. Then, you looked up at the sky, and I felt your weight slowly leave my chest, and I watched you getting lighter and lighter and lighter. You drifted upwards and I watched you become smaller and it wasn’t so scary anymore. You didn’t look like a speck of dirt falling from a great height, you looked like a dandelion puff, wafting away. And I realized I could inhale, so I did.
Again, I didn’t mind stepping back into your life for a little while. I think I learned something. I understand why you kept me at arm’s length now, don’t worry, I know what you were afraid of. Anyway, I won’t be seeing you anymore. At least, not in that way. I bumped into you again on the train many mornings after that last dream. You boarded after me, and it was so strange looking at you from inside my body instead of yours. You walked straight ahead to find an available seat, and I caught a glimpse of something shiny. You were holding your new briefcase, the one I had given you for your birthday, and placing it in your lap as you sat down. You held onto it as you drifted off to sleep, along with all the other passengers who couldn’t stand to get up before sunrise. The rest of us settled in for the journey, and the sun rose over all our sleepless faces.
Sophie Villeneuve writes poetry and prose in Montréal. She is currently pursuing a BA in English and Creative Writing at Concordia University. She says she writes to get to know herself, but she has yet to make sense of anything. Her work has previously appeared in yolk.