The poppy tea had made my thoughts heavy and my mind lethargic, but it did not carry me into dreamland. I stayed rooted in my bed, my brain very much aware that I was under the sheets of a dusty, old bed inside a dusty, old room, inside an odd, triangular building, in the center of the Dead City. I thought about my geographical position in the world and mused at how small I am.
So very small.
I put my arm around AVI. It seemed like the right thing to do. If I was small, then so was she and we could be small together. AVI stirred and stretched her body, but did not wake. I kept my chest pressed next to her back and my hand placed lightly on the soft skin of her arm. The night was so still and quiet, I could feel the blood passing under her skin. It was carrying dreams.
I imagined if I concentrated hard enough, I could feel the pulse of the dreams and let myself live within them as well. I pictured myself siphoning dreams from her skin, coaxing them out of her pores like hot days do to sweat. I stayed this way for a while, listening to AVI’s blood, feeling her dreams. Then, I let my gaze wander out the window.
The last of the pale rays had set long ago and the Dead City was dark and blue. It was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the buildings rose up. It seems to me the line between sky and earth is infinitesimally thin. I sometimes think about this when I’m looking over the sea that washes up to meet the Dead City. The sea stretches away from shore, traveling across miles and miles of open distance, until it meets with the sky at the far end of the horizon. But it is a tentative meeting—the meeting of two lips of the same mouth—and one can image a breath of air passing through the gap where they meet.
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.