Real

There’s something about you that makes me wonder why I’ve been hiding from the world my whole life. You look me in the eyes when you talk to me and you treat me as your equal. Even when what I say makes no sense, you sit with me until it does. Or when the clothes I wear don’t match and I can’t be bothered to change, nothing stops you from walking down the street right next to me. Of all the people in the world, you’re the only one I care about seeing me and for now, the only one I care about knowing me.

We sit on mountaintops for hours and stare at the city spread below us until the light of the world goes out and the lights of the millions of people below us flicker in and out, constantly keeping us from seeing the stars. Even when the world is out there waiting for me to fall in love with all the amazing people and places it has to offer, I’ll always come back to see your face in disbelief. How can someone so wonderful be real and be standing right in front of me?

There are days when I forget that you’re hard to believe in. When we drive around town and talk about normal things and drink normal coffee. We bicker about politics and memories and who has better hair. The rest of the days when you’re near, I get the sudden urge to hold your face in my hands and make sure that you’re real, make sure you won’t dissolve right before me.

No matter how many times you reassure me that you won’t, not again, I’m all too aware of where we’ve been. The last time we were almost like we are now, we both disappeared from each other’s view. We were too much for each other. There was too much history and too many feelings and I ran away scared only to find out that you did too. Funny how we’ve always been in sync, even when we’re universes apart.

With the last time on my mind every second you’re near, I can’t have hope that it won’t be that way again. I’m too smart for that, too strong and fragile to be able to believe to otherwise. Every caress may be my last and every glimpse might be the beginning of you walking away for the last time. You’re a dream I know I’ll have to wake up from to a world of nightmares without you. It’s all sunshine with you because the threat of darkness exists right between the time the sun comes up and the city turns off it’s lights. That’s where my nightmare begins and you disappear again into an existence without a next time for this recurring dream. I want you to be real.

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