A Dream from an Admitted Non Dreamer

I don’t dream often.

I mean, I dream in the wishing sense that basketball players tell you.

“Dream, big! You can be anything you want to be…”

Like that.

But, in sleep--the type of dreams my people call reveyons—those dreams rarely ever happen to me.

Unless someone is speaking to me.

I had a dream on Sunday night. And for a non dreamer who dreams, it was a heavy one. I’ve been trying to put it together in my head for the past few days. I have stewed over it and gone to sleep early about it, praying each time beforehand that my grandmother would come again and expound. I even took a nap about it, impatient to find out what it might mean.

Let me tell you the dream…

Me and the all too inconsistent constantly reoccurring “him” in my life are entering a party hand-in-hand. This is odd in itself because we rarely, if ever, hold hands in public. There is a girl there. She is standing on the mass of a black boat, snarling at me. Instantly, I feel that this girl is the antithesis of who I am. She is light skin and rail thin with a short, Rhi-Rhi circa Good Girl Gone Bad, jet black hair style. Her lips are luscious and her eyes are a little blank, filled only by the apparent dislike she has for me.

I’m finna whoop your ass, bitch.

I look around. Certainly, she can’t be talking to me. I’ve never met this Chicago-esque hood booger in my entire life.

As if she reads my mind, she points at me, and then, in the strangest manner, throws up a pinky.

I’m an AKA, you know.

Then she sticks up a middle finger.

How, um…AKAish, I retort, sarcasm dripping from my voice. Apparently, even in my dreams, I’m an asshole. Why do you want to fight me?

Because you had the nerve to show up here with my man. She spits.

Oh. Ok. I let go of his hand.

You’re not going to fight for me, Steph? I hear his voice beside me ask.

No. I reply.

And then I turn to him. He has morphed. Skin that I once thought so flawless is replaced my hideous legions of pimples. His caramel tone has taken on hints of black, almost bruise like marks and the body that got me through drab afternoons with a secretive grin across my face had now transformed into a mass of lard, his stomach peeking out from underneath a too tight, dingy polo shirt and lapping over a pair of stained, khaki cargo shorts, seemingly pristine compared to his used-to be-white grey shell toes and I can’t decide if he’s wearing socks or ash.

But I don’t seem taken aback by this transformation, this sudden change of aesthetic attraction. I seem…resigned.

Are you serious?!

Yes. I reply. And I can’t help but think that I sound almost droid-ish, as if coming out of a trance. She can have you.

Bitch, I don’t want your leftovers. She charges at me, fangs pulled.

I want you, Steph. He says, in front of me now, pleading.

I see her charging at us and wonder why he seems oblivious to the screeching of her hate as she comes close.

You gonna let her do this? He asks my sister.

She shrugs.

The girl is hurling herself at us. Her eyes are now yellow, her iris black.

At the last minute, I am able to peel the swollen, gnarled fingers of his hand off of my shoulder and I step gingerly out of the way.

She digs her fangs into his swollen neck, and the air begins to leave him. He deflates as if he were a balloon, all the helium leaving too rapidly for him to beg for someone to blow it back up again.

She holds his arm as he becomes limp, and, with some effort, takes her fangs out of his neck. There is no blood. She turns and drags his form toward the black boat, over every bump on the marina, with no care as for if she’s hurting him.

And me?

I wave. Turn.

A deep breath later, I’m smiling.

I walk away.

Then I’m startled awake.

What do you think?