Dreaming

She finds me in my dreams, when I'm vulnerable. She slink about in the shadowed nooks of my mind, flitting from sight whenever my thoughts catch her picking locks on doors and peeking into pools of memory. She flees and no matter how I chase her, she always escapes. A phantasmic beauty.

Until I fall asleep.

When I dream she's a warrior, adrift in a maelstrom. The wind batters her on the deck of a ship, certain to dash itself on the crest of a wave and sink. She howls into the storm like some mad pirate, her bow drawn, arrow nocked, as serpentine creatures rise from the roiling sea to snatch at her. She fires, draws, fires again, hurtling insults and arrows into the storm and its monsters. Her clothes cling to her milky skin and rain runs over her in rivulets like unbridled flood water. At first I think she is afraid, that she screams from fear of the monsters and the storm, but I'm wrong. This woman fears nothing. She screams defiance. She screams a challenge and the sea is at her mercy.

When I dream she is lost somewhere and I am searching for her, chasing her across lakes and fields or through narrow halls that seem to branch out forever. I find her in a washed out world of greys and blurred scenery, a kind of half-world that exists solely as a backdrop for her. In this dream she isn't a woman at all. She's a tiger. The half-light casts shadows between her shoulderblades as she stalks a circle around me, makes her stripes seem to move and slither along her thick, muscular frame. Her mouth seems massive as she leaps at me, pins me to the ground. A tremendous black hole. Something inescapable. She is powerful, predatory, and exhilarating.

When I dream she is asleep in my bed. The sun drifts in through the window and slips its golden fingers through her hair. She smells sweet, slightly flowery, and I am hesitant to wake her. There is a serenity about this dream, something I very rarely feel, and I am loathe to spoil it, but a touch of my fingertips on one bare shoulder won't hurt. A light kiss on the forehead. Her eyes flutter open, and so do mine.

When I dream we make love with a vicious mix of passion and carnality. There is a dizzying, heady mixture of lust and violence, of desire and destruction. Two predators with claws and teeth and soft, supple lips. Her voice echoes in my head, a series of whispers and screams and deep, throaty moans. Filthy, debaucherous things and bright, mellifluous things. My name hangs on her lips, clawing for purchase as if it wants to force itself back down the throat that uttered it. In the midst of it I am probably screaming unintelligible things, pouring words into her ear and dangling precariously close to falling in myself when she bucks, back arching and drags her nails over my back as if trying to peel me from the spine.

When I'm awake, and alert, she is hidden from me. But when I sleep, there is no escaping her.

Dreamily Yours,
-S.R.