I fell into sleep with the thought that if I ever claim the threshold of my own desires, it would be a fearsome thing to behold, and woke to the warmth of soft, gentle tears from the beauty of the echoing dreams. I fear what I want and I want what I fear. The crimson rush of blood and the terror of pain.
I feel the edges closing in and know the words are closer to the tip of my tongue.
I came twice last night with the metallic taste of fear in my mouth and the image of needles protruding from my skin, the resonate sensation of desire claimed: I asked for this, and once in my mind, words from lips are soon to follow suit.
I will ask for this, and the thought shoots terror like lightning through my skin, electrifying my senses. Awake, I am clinging to dreams that feel as real as memory; I cannot differentiate where one begins and the other ends. So be it. I have not dreamed so viscerally in years.
And my words and desire hang suspended in time, my fingers curling toward a golden glow, an ichor washing down my throat. In my dreams, I drink the blood of gods and whisper fearless words into the sky. In my dreams, my eyes could dull the edge of a knife and slice away the fear that stills my hands and lips, the electric pulse of muscular movement as I entangle you in me.
I remember my dreams with the same potency that I encode memory; it wasn’t real, I remind myself and yet, the ferocity of sensation still courses through, betraying the memory I know to be true.
Because these dreams were a version of myself I have lived, an image of me that I envision over and over in my mind: fearless, unfettered, uncensored. It is the part of me that walks the precarious line of, “what if?” and does not fear the imposition of my heart splayed out along the skin of a lover. Wet, dripping, messy, full, and real, so much more real than the caricature of self that I so often inhabit.
In my dreams, I held pain suspended in the lines of faces I loved and bowed my head with grace. In my dreams, I whispered the words, “I want this,” and they came clear and fresh and unashamed. In my dreams, I grasped with my hands without thought, pushed against your skin like you were something unbreakable, held taut the lines of desire until, gasping, we begged one another for release.
In my dreams, I writhed against the bonds I asked you to place, and held you still with my own in tandem. And in my dreams, I quivered against the sharp points that touched my thighs and breathed through the terror as they pressed in and through to hang suspended in the surface of my skin. I drained the shot of lifeblood pulled from within your veins, and I writhed and screamed against the edges of your teeth until your lips were stained red.
In my dreams, I claimed the ferocity and fullness of desires aching and pulsing in my skin, and rose to meet the challenge of my fear. And when I woke, I lived the dream that dreams were real and felt the shift settle beneath the surface of my skin, for when I woke to gentle tears, I felt the dawn of something stirring, the beginning of a journey, the map unmarked save for the haphazard scrawl of “what if?” staining the top of the page in crimson words that speak of fear, and desire, and the metallic taste of pooling blood.
Monomaniacism 