The living room came back slowly.
Rain tapped the harbor windows. The television showed a silent menu screen, its blue light washing over the opposite wall. Marlowe lay on the rug with his paws twitching through a dream of his own.
I was on the couch beneath a wool blanket.
My right hand rested on my chest.
For several seconds, I could still feel Reid behind me.
Then the sensation thinned.
The hand became air.
The heartbeat became mine.
I shut my eye and tried to rebuild the dream.
Water inside the apartment.
The green lamp.
Reid’s whistle.
His palm on my neck.
The more firmly I held the details, the faster they broke apart. It was like trying to keep rain in my fist.
I reached for the journal on the side table.
The pen was tucked into the spiral binding.
Writing had become an act of patience. My right hand worked, but the signals between intention and movement seemed to travel by a longer route now. Letters leaned into one another. Words wandered above and below the lines.
I wrote:
Dream.
Water in apartment.
Could not find door.
Reid whistled.
Hand on neck.
Knew him before I saw him.
I stopped.
That was the important part.
I had known him.
Not because someone explained who he was.
Not because his name appeared beneath photographs or at the top of a message thread.
In the dream, my body had understood him without evidence.
