November 16th 2019

You found me again in my dreams last night.

You always do, even when you do not appear as a face,

you arrive as a feeling.

I fell asleep with the soft weight of your presence in my chest,

and woke with it still lingering, like the echo of a touch

that never truly happened.

This dream was different. We were a family; you, me, the children. Children I have never met yet somehow knew instinctively, as if they were written into my bones.

I felt love for them, real, startling, fierce.

Not imagined love, but the kind that roots itself into the heart

before you even understand what it means.For a moment, it felt like home. Like I had walked into a future that breathed softly around us, gentle and warm and impossibly whole.

Waking was sharp.

There is a kind of ache that only dreams can give, like losing something that was never yours, yet somehow belonged to you in another life, another timeline.

You already have that world in your waking life, and it is not my place to want a door into it.

You were never mine in this life. I have no right to feel jealous of a life that exists far beyond my reach.

But when you speak of your children, your voice softens, your eyes change, and I adore you more for it.

How could I not?

Your happiness matters to me, even in the places where it breaks me to witness it.

I want you to have joy, even if I am only ever someone who watches from the quiet edges of your story.