Was it all just a dream? The highway is covered in a light fog. The late autumn landscapes outside the bus windows are blurred and blended with my own reflection in the glass. The trees are bare and I feel just as naked and raw on the inside. I’m so tired and sick with the flu. I want to go home and sleep, but it’s a long ride and I feel uncomfortable in my seat. My heart has a sour feeling to it. I want to cry but I know if I do, I won’t be able to stop. When we said goodbye at the airport, I thought my heart would physically break. After you went through security and you disappeared from my visual world, I felt numb and went to a café and had a sandwich for breakfast, watching your plane vanish into the grey sky.

Missing you is harder now than before you came here. It was easier to miss you like a fantasy than as a reality. And your scent has already faded from my memory.

Was it just a dream? You came here and changed my life. It was almost two weeks of pure intimacy and love. We were being silly, laughing from our cores, citing Girls and creating adventures with our imagination. Exploring each other and ourselves like we were on spiritual safari. Two weeks felt like one single long and wonderful day – even though I got sick and you had to spend some time taking care of me. It was the first time we shared the same time, and it was confusing and that confusion helped us create our own sense of time, where days and nights were blending and bleeding hours, minutes and seconds. We used our heartbeats and time as oxygen. We didn’t need anything else.

When I got home to my empty apartment, I started to doubt it all. Was it all just a dream? The long trip to the airport and back had detached me a bit from the experience of you and I felt numb and the fever didn’t help. I went to bed and looked over at the empty side next to me where you slept and I could still feel your presence in my bed.

So – was it just a dream? I have never experienced something like this before. Good things rarely happens to me and I still don’t have any words to describe all the feelings you create in me. It will take me a long  time to be able to find the right shades of red to paint what I am feeling. I want to go back to painting, soon. You inspire me to create, especially with your writing. I know we will collaborate together at some point. My future is filled with unexplored excitement. I am overloaded with unexpressed words, brush strokes and colors. I need you and I need my art.

We are not a dream, but what we share is a gift that will keep creating more and more opportunities for us to grow, experience life, creativity and love, together- and in a way, that is a dream, even though it is as real as life itself.