Ellery Bailey
Dream Six Thousand Nine Hundred and Thirty-Five
I had trouble sleeping last night, as I entered some brilliant hallucination of my psyche. I wandered The Field Museum, which I have, begrudgingly, visited only once in real life. (If we are considering that dreams are nothing more than wrinkles in time.) Like a nomad, with no permanence and place in modernity, I ventured across the cavernous rooms and with the arrogance only a teenager could possess, I scoffed at all that came before me and made remarks about how, well, I could have known that… If only I appreciated silly things like history and preserving the past. I examined the skeletal remains of that giant fucking Titanosaur and contemplated what the value of creating a cast out of such a creature was if it no longer walks the same earth I do. I came to the conclusion that even if it did it would surely be incarcerated, locked in a cage to be looked at as it is now, a million years later to be made a fool out of, for simply existing. Deemed far too large for it to be usual, a spectacle for those who feel like they blend into crowds and fit the mold for what can only be described as unremarkable. An outcast for being so unnatural, as such monsters are these days.
As I tried to decide whether it was dinosaurs or people I hated, a human skeleton emerged from the other side of the room and like in most of my dreams that skeleton was supposed to be you. Except, as you approached me, I couldn’t recognize a single one of your features, at least, well enough to presume you to be a known evil. Soon enough, your sorry bones were within arms reach of the black hole that had become my body and I smiled knowing my new form was an allegory for the gravitational pull that comes with me, still being me, and you, still being you. As this new entity, you could no longer offer me a pitiful excuse, there'd be no escaping, you'd be doomed. You’d be swallowed whole by me, and my everlasting infatuation with being embarrassed.
As I sized you up (in the smug way I always do) I noticed the sockets of your eyes were pooling with twin galaxies, and each pinhole of light seeping from the pair was a culmination of every single lover I’ve burned through, and you were no longer just you. I knew the time was approaching where I’d have to acknowledge that I hadn’t forgotten, that I must open my mouth and address you, but when I tried to, I couldn’t formulate a single greeting that seemed appropriate for this kind of confrontation, where I’m next to a skeleton and have no idea what name I’d call it and what pronouns to use. If it was inevitably my turn to apologize, or to be surprised. If I should let my anger manifest itself in silence, or if all of this had been contrived.
What if I shouldn’t have forgiven you?
Instead of a hello or hi I began reciting a monologue that’d been tucked away in some fold of my brain, or maybe it was the eulogy I’d written for when someone would eventually come back and grieve me. Either way, I cried;
I don’t know what name you prefer anymore or if you even remember mine. I don’t know if you’re the one who loved me, or left me, or told me to wait for you. I don’t know if you're the one who only ever fucked me, or hit me, or hurt me. I don’t know if you resent me, or regret me, or respect me. I don’t know if you're the one who forgot to wish me happy birthday, until I had to remind you a week later that I was still alive. I don’t know why you are here now, or who you are anymore, or why you chose today to come to this museum in the city neither of us have lived, or for that matter, will ever live in or what you want from me. I don’t know much of anything, but dear god, if you have come back to make amends, if you have come back to tell me I will no longer be a second choice or a wet dream or an afterthought… If you are here to love me?
Then fucking love me.
In the absurdity of my speech, I watched your stars be sucked from those glittering galaxies creating a meteor shower as they spiraled straight into my mass of dark matter instantaneously extinguished the heavier I breathed. Every single one of them had been put out, and yet, I was empty.
The skeleton that had once been standing to face me was no longer you, or anyone I’d ever loved, known, or seen. It had collapsed on the tile beneath me, nothing more than an assortment of bones and anatomy. There were no more galaxies, or stars, or meteors, or any of those celestial things.
My body was not a black hole and there, in the middle of that damn history museum I came to an epiphany; it was the conclusion that I will never be able to forget anyone that I hate more than anything. And in one last attempt to gain some sort of semblance from the whole catastrophe I screamed;
I'M SORRY FOR WANTING TO KNOW WHEN SOMEONE WILL FINALLY LOVE ME!
Ellery Bailey is a student at Kenyon College in Ohio. They study English and Gender and Sexuality Studies.