i keep waking up elsewhere

Lately, I have been getting strange dreams. Heart beating through my ribs, sweat drops on my forehead, and my ears ringing. I wake up praying without meaning to. Weird dreams aren’t new to me. I’ve been having them for a long time. Unfathomable, but somehow surreal. I feel it in my fingers when I touch someone or the way my knees tingle when I fall. And I fall jolting up from my warm mattress, the duvet all crumpled. I have recorded some of these daymares in writing. Drift notes: Strange Dreams. Says it all. 

In these dreams, people are leaving. They’re just leaving. Abandoning me all alone in my home. Cold, and grim- the moulds grow stronger at the corners of the room. I could taste the mildew in my tongue, the condensation covering the windows, unable to peek through from the outside as the fungus envelops me and kills my lungs. I couldn’t understand it.

People are ignoring me. Or pretending to, I couldn’t tell and it makes me panic. It bubbles in my stomach, and eats away my intestines. I cry, and I wail. And I sob, but they don’t bat an eye. I’m angry, why aren’t they listening to me? “Please don’t leave me,” I begged and I don’t like begging. But I am. They don’t stop. They walk away, and they start running. Fast and far. I don’t catch up somehow, I’m not a bad runner. I fall on the concrete floor, it’s hot but it didn’t matter. My eyes closed as tears poured endlessly like a waterfall, it fizzled as soon as it hit the ground because of how burning hot it was. I open my eyes half-way, and I’m in the ground. My whole body melted into a puddle. I see a car drive through, I could see the tracks on its wheels pressing onto me but it doesn’t hurt. 

They’re leaving, they won’t say why. They look at me, upset. What have I done? Have I done something wrong? I didn’t mean to if I did. Tears start to pool in my eyes again. I stood at the back of the school building. Obscure writings on the walls, I don’t remember what it says. All I see is his arms around another woman, he looks over his shoulders. His gaze were hateful. Villainising almost, I suddenly could hear his thoughts. I wasn’t good enough, that’s why. I cry, and I wail. And I sob. I run after them, but they’re gone and I’m back home.

Sat on my bedroom floor as darkness succumbs me. My mother and father had left. Their things- clothes, phones, shoes, bags, still here and they never leave without their things. I don’t understand. Sweat brims my forehead, droplets roll down my face, racing my salty tears on my cheeks. Everyone’s gone, and I’m all alone. And I wonder if it’s God’s curse for not praying all the time. 

I wake up praying and sweating, crying and heart palpitating. I check my phone and I see his text message, “Good morning, my love.” My parents’ voices buzzed throughout the whole house, waking me up from the deepest of my slumber. I know people say a lot of things about dreams. That it’s psychic, and resonating and stupid, and made up stuff. 

I don’t know, but I know now that my biggest fear is people leaving me.