...My heart skips a beat. The wind is knocked out of me and suddenly I’m standing alone, completely surrounded by countless blurred faces in a familiar open foyer from my past. I stand motionless in the midst of scurrying adolescents, clutching my books to my chest. Sheepishly, I look up from my polished mary-janes. I see you for the first time, again. You sit across the way, thoughtfully gazing through the glass towards the open field outside. I find myself in a trans; unable to move. You glance at me in the reflection. Your brilliant blue eyes lock with mine. Your face softened into a sweet smile mirroring my own. We had a connection, you and me; brief as it were. For five whole seconds we were the only two in existence and in that moment, I knew the image of your intoxicating allure would forever be burned onto my heart like an insignia I would be sentenced to live with for the rest of my life. I would now have to force myself to stay cloaked in the shadows of lies, never to let on to my own true feelings within. For that, I hated you. 

I woke in a cold sweat again, breathless. This is the forth night in a row I have been visited with this bitter sweet vision. Why do these dreams, these flashes of a dead reality, keep haunting me so? Dreams, they say, are visions of the heart’s deepest and truest desires. I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps maybe they are right.