It was something like a fugue dream. A dream within a dream? I can remember it … I didn’t know it the first day, I didn’t know for a while. And I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the exact moment I knew but I can remember how I felt. How I still feel.
There is something beautiful about him. Something familiar, like I’ve been here before. But I haven’t. Something in the way he ‘ah-ha’ and he lifts his chin up and smiles. You can see his snaggletooth. Sometimes his snaggletooth is the only thing sticking out when he smiles with his lips closed. As if he has secrets to keep but his secrets are asking to be let out.
He makes me feel like a fish out of water. But I am not gasping for air. I breathe in slowly, I breathe out slowly. I breathe like it is the only thing I have to do. It is the only thing I have to do. Besides trying to not get hit in the head.
“One high, two lows,” he says. “Under. Again. 3 twos. Again.” I am trying to catch my breath, I recount in my head what each move is numbered. I want to focus on him but I can’t. I stare straight ahead, all things in my periphery a haze. Similar to how life has been the last few months. A haze.
Where did he come from?
Where has he been?
How did we get here?
“I am trying!” I say winded. “I am processing. It is not clicking.”
“You got it, Hong. You can do it. Go, Hong, go!” He tells me all the time. I hear him. So much so he has become the voice in my head. In the very back. Behind the medulla. Especially on the days after I haven’t seen him and the moments prolonged before I get to see him again. But I can wait.
He is patient. Like a grasshopper.
I am patient. Like a shark. I can wait.
I look at him. In a haze. Sometimes because I want to remember the bigger picture of him. I observe the way the angles on his face form this beautiful silhouette. My eyes outline the corner of his shoulder over his head and circles around his hairs that are overdue for a cut. In my mind I trace the outline of the tattoo on the side of his head.
A thought crosses my mind. Something Catherine said … “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
His and mine are the same.
I didn’t know it the first day. I didn’t even know it the first 10 times. But somewhere in between, I felt it. Kismet. I am standing on the edge of love. I am ready for the fall.
He is a dream. Within my dreams. He is a secret I am excited to let out.
But … I can wait.
14 June 2022.
Native & Foreign 