Christmas Morning; a dream. I am sitting on the front lawn of a house where my family lived in South Florida for four years when I was a child. A blazing afternoon sun high overhead. It’s hot, but bearable, not summer sweltering, humidity so thick it steals your breath hot. I am an adult, not a child sitting in the grass in front of my childhood home.
Stephanie walks up and I realize I am dreaming.
“Hello,” she smiles.
“Hi,” I say, almost meekly, like the last five years were some terrible dream, less tangible than the crabgrass plucked from memory and subconscious to jab up at my legs through black denim. The woman I once loved, and then hated, and then loved again, like I could never quite make up my mind, is standing in front of me.
“Should you be here?” I ask. “I thought I heard somewhere that you were very sick.”
It is then that I note Stephanie does not, in fact, look very sick. Even with my sitting on the ground, and her standing, she is still tiny, but she was always one of the few people in the world shorter than I am. Her skin looks clear, radiant. She smiles and her teeth are white, not the sallow hall of cracked mirrors reflecting a life hard lived and ruinous decisions they had become in her final years. Her body appears full, and her skin is clear, instead of the pale portrait of self-starvation she had become.
A stirring desire that I am a little ashamed of reminds me that I once found Stephanie very beautiful.
“Oh, I am, honey. I’m so sick. There’s coming back from this one.”
Her smile widens into a laugh, and I remember how many times I watched Steph laugh off life in favor of whatever taste of oblivion she could swallow long enough to forget who she was. I hate her again for half a second. The hate dissolves the moment she opens her mouth to speak again.
“I just thought we should maybe talk before I go.”
“Well, here you are. Let’s talk.”
In the time-honored tradition of our fondest dreams being our cruelest dreams, my perspective shifts. I float, bodiless like a heatwave shimmering off sweltering blacktop. From above, I watch Stephanie and I speak. A soft breeze rustles the grass, the leaves, wisps of clouds traverse the sky, dissipating at the horizon. Stephanie’s and my next words, our last words are lost to the wind. We speak, but I can’t hear what we say.
I only hope we spoke of softer things, at last.
“I’ve gotta go now, Sascha.”
“Goodbye Stephanie. I wish this story had a different ending, but I hope some of the love I have held for you over the years gets to accompany you to wherever you’re going.”
“Bye Sascha. I hope so too. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take this Pepsi.”
I realize there is a can of Pepsi sitting in front of the tree I used to climb as a little boy.
I laugh, “Sure Stephanie. You can have that can of Pepsi. I have no idea why it’s there. Dreams, huh?”
We embrace one more time, and our lips touch for a ghost of a second. All the lost warmth of cold and dead years floods through my lips through my body, and all is forgiven.
I watched Stephanie walk down the street until her form faded from sight.
Into her death.
I woke up to a strange, snow-covered city and a pillow wet with tears.
Signals Fill The Void 