Never There

You poison her dream is how it starts. Sticky sweet cartoon hearts in the air and fingers entwined, face-to-face bliss broken and stolen when she opens her eyes and suddenly you’re in her stomach. She can’t close them again, not with you there, elbowing, yanking, making everything slow and thick. The whole wide world turns to static.

Wide awake and sleepwalking, the trees don’t move, no one speaks. She hears music, but only in cellos and pianos and bittersweet lulls. You’re still there, only now you’re seeping from her skin. It’s invisible, but she can feel it. Green goo suctioning her feet to the ground like mud, forcing her eyelids down, her lips shut. A blind, deaf, dumb sleepwalker; useless. She can’t rationalize what she doesn’t see, hear, say. She cannot rationalize this.

Her entire day is you in friends and family, coworkers and strangers. She’s not sure if you possess them or her, so she squeezes her eyes shut ‘til there are tears. A moment, then gone. Stay on track in the fog 'til five.

It follows her home and she’d run if she could, but she can’t. Never could.

She curls up in bed at dusk, safe and sound and scared that you’re never there.