Dreaming through every obstacle

What she does is she talks in her sleep, a conversation we have that develops slowly toward the end of its sentences like Polaroid film. In her sleep she is brim-full of accusation, mostly about my wakefulness, like there’s some betrayal in me laughing when she says she only smokes cigarettes on beachfront property, and even then only when it’s middle school.

The thing is, though, it does feel like a betrayal. Like I’m seeing her opened up, like naked in a new and unfair way that I can’t reciprocate. In the daytime, she stays quiet, there’s this great reservation in her speech that’s developed over the last year or so, and this from a person who already uses pronouns like they’re well-worn blankets, who says you know… instead of naming what’s really bothering her. It is either things are being unsaid or there are no things to say.

So I listen intently to what bubbles up, and maybe that’s a cheat. In fact, I know it is. But I’m anxious to catch the smallest hint, the barest trace, the tiniest reassurance that things are going better than me staying up late to play videogames because I can’t sleep and her crestfallen and sighing and then asleep on the couch would seem to indicate. And I never get it if I’m being honest. Maybe that I’m looking is enough.