Love is a paper racetrack
In the spring, I had the kind of vivid dreams you have once in a while every single night.
I dreamed that everyone at summer camp was mad at me because I said something offensive about Christians, but really I was singing a song by The 1975. I had a lot of dreams about babies, but it was never clear if they were mine. Except for the time I dreamed I was looking for my baby who was born 11 years ago. I don't know what that means. I dreamed of a baby dog with baby puppies who were lost, but eventually found under the couch.
I had a dream that I was flying over somewhere I knew was heaven. A carved stone city tucked in a blanket of perfect moss. Something inside me knew I was going to fall, and as I came closer to the green I braced myself to die. I closed my eyes as my stomach dropped, but when I opened them I was outside of whatever being I was, and landed as two peacefully holding hands on a pillow of moss.
These dreams coincided with meeting a boy who would go on to be in them. He was kind of small and very silly, self obsessed but handsome. He could only breathe if people liked him, and I did like him. Around me he had enough air to talk, about anything, and somehow I listened to him, even when he interrupted an entire movie.
I liked him. I liked that he was the last one to say something before going to sleep. I liked that he was funny, I liked that he knew that I was funnier than he was. I liked that when I asked him if he sang when he’s all alone, he said, “I sing when I'm not alone.”
He told me that he thought we got along so well because we’re both “silly”. Yes. We went for a walk in the woods and I jumped in enough mud to cover up to my ankles. He picked me up over his shoulder in the parking lot of a sushi restaurant. He drove with one foot out the window. I got both of my knees stuck in the rails of his balcony.
I started to get the feeling that if I lost him, there would be an unfillable hole in my life, and that I would never laugh again. I felt my stomach drop, I fell, and I woke up next to you. I fell, and woke up next to you, which is to say a piece of me, and now you’re gone. I had a dream that God showed me his baby picture.
May 2025
Hi ,
A few weeks ago you told me that no one has ever written a poem about you (that you know of), and I found it a curious thing because I always feel like there’s music playing when I'm around you. This is not a poem but a letter, sometimes things don't work out the way you thought they might. I did try to write a poem about you, but I didn't finish it. I got only this far:
Two arrows shoot across the woods and kiss each other
You don't know you’re flying in circles until you find the other wing
It’s special to meet a piece of yourself in another
Even if only for the fourth month of spring
I don’t know if I like it, maybe you will. My favorite memories with you won’t rhyme. You told me you wanted to stop talking completely if one of us caught feelings, so I never told you that after you kissed me the first time, everything started to smell like you. My shampoo, my friends, the heater. The tiger lilies and green figs smelled like rain, and the rain smelled like you.
If we never see each other again, I hope the rest of your life is lucky in every way. I hope you keep singing when you’re alone.
– Jane
We never talked again until he called me months later to apologize. He sounded sincere and uncomfortable. I told him thank you. I told him that it was a long time ago. He told me he had to go, and I said, “That's it? I haven't heard from you for months, you call me out of nowhere to say four sentences, and now you ‘have to go’?” He apologized, and then told me he had to go. I said okay, but I didn't hang up. It was never going to be me to hang up. I was still on the ground shot in the woods. He was the arrow who came out whole. We stayed on the phone in silence for 15 more minutes.
“I don't think it's ever going to feel like that again,”
“I think it will,”
I hold myself back from replying, “Maybe for you.”
He hangs up the phone. I cry and write everything down on the only piece of paper in my apartment, a giant bandaid.
That night I dreamed that Tim Gunn was a Geometricien showing us how to put shapes back together again. He folded a piece of paper into the shape of a tiny 3D racetrack, a fragile never ending loop. I wanted it to work out with , but it wouldn’t.
I get along without you very well,
Of course I do.
Except sometimes when soft rain falls,
And dripping off the trees recalls
How you and I stood deep in mist
One day far in the woods, and kissed.
But now I get along without you - well,
Of course I do,
I really have forgotten you, I boast,
Of course I have.
Except when someone sings a strain
Of song, then you are here again;
Or laughs a way which is the same
As yours; or when I hear your name.
I really have forgotten you
- almost.
Of course I have.
– Jane Brown Thompston, 1924
Last night I had a dream that I was on a roller coaster. That one where you’re in a little booth with 1 other person and it goes in circles up in the air. He was in my booth. Random people from throughout my life were in the others. Two people fell out and died: Nathalie, a girl I knew in elementary and middle school who was a “weird”, aka my friend. We would hang out in the summer time on the tire swing in her back yard. She had a gum ball machine in her house. I watched her fall and hit the ground. The other person who died I knew during my dream but I can’t remember anymore. Maybe a teacher I had a long time ago. I was pretty shaken up. Him and I went home and took a shower while I was hysterically crying and it seemed we were only getting more and more dirt everywhere. In my dream I went to bed covered in water and dirt holding him in my arms.