I wanted so badly to cry today.

I’d ventured as far as to create horrible fantasies involving my own death, and the events that would follow. I pictured the faces of my friends and family, wondered what their grieving words might be. Some of it was pure conjecture, likely inaccurate, and reminiscent only of a sad guy’s wishing heart. Some of it I thought could be true.

I had another dream last night, though more like a nightmare. Never in my life have I been struck with the typical nightmares and terrors that I commonly hear told of. Mine are something of my own design, centered around the one thing that frightens me, though it is not something tangible or even sensible to others. Even in description they sound wholly lame. There’s a reoccurring theme and it often centers around one other, though some times the characters are interchanged. I’m not sure of why that is, exactly. At times, even, the most pivotal of cast members are those entirely unrecognizable to me.

You smiled at me for my mistakes. Tripped over a kid’s guitar and broke it because I couldn’t hold myself up. There were large greenhouses and array of disappointed associates, all hugging whiskey gingers to their lips and driving their scorn into my eyes. That’s my drink, and all I wanted was a sip to wash the nerves away. Apologized for everything, not sure what I’d even done. The dream climaxed with the onset of a very brooding conversation with three of your aunts. I’d took them for something like witches or fairy godmothers, with a peculiar comedic charm and a hint of absolute, terrifying power. Their faces were entirely unfamiliar; they are certainly of no relation to you on this plane of existence, should they exist at all. Their words, pouring from their imaginary mouths, were all too real to stomach. I awoke nauseous and well before they’d made their point. I am still unable to shake the tension.

I make small mistakes that yield small results, translating to large holes in my heart. No amount of perseverance, it seems, can correct them. In my nightmares I am never allowed to get you back.

We all have some article - a shirt or token, a small note written in the fourth grade, or a favorite pen indented with the evolution of our anxious teeth that, despite our attempts to grow beyond, we can seldom hope to relinquish. There is that one absolute truth in our lives which we carve transparently into journals with strange pages that can never be forgotten. I’d always hoped for my name to appear just once in the overarching words of your life story, because your name repeats endlessly in mine.

Looks like Winter’s here.