It was much too late when we fell asleep last night. I don't understand why you keep your eyes open to listen to my tribulations. I stare at the ceiling, numb, blinking. Do I make you feel alone?
I drifted to sleep after you turned off the light. Each time you lay your arm across my side at night, I am tempted to give a silent prayer. The fear of the day when you are no longer able to bear the weight of my suffering and the stories I tell you of it, fills me with a nausea I cannot describe.
I had a dream last night. I was holding a map of the countries of Africa in my hand, only the map wasn't a typical one of browns, or greens or blues, to represent landscapes. The entire thing was a dark, navy blue. It looked like a map of constellations within the continent. I was to travel there in the morning, to a city that started with the letter "M", though I cannot recall exactly what the name was. Everything was dark, as if I were looking at the map at night. You pointed to small, obscure shapes within the country of Uganda, and you told me they were lakes. The lights that dotted across them on the map looked like stars.
You have been everywhere, it seems. I listened as you told me about them. I remember feeling so very saddened, hearing you tell me these things you've seen, knowing the places you've gone. There is so much life in you, you have seen so much that I haven't. I see the life that I want in the stories you tell me; I imagine them in my head. I cry out for them, sometimes.
At some point in the dream, I found myself in a boat out on one of these lakes. Like on the map, it was pitch black, the water a stirring navy blue. I looked out and saw nothing but the endless blackness of the night, as if land ceased to exist. But among this blackness, these small star-lights hovered over the water, or just beneath the surface of it. Everywhere were the lights I had seen on the map, the stars that now hung, as if suspended by an invisible string, a couple feet away, or half a mile, or anywhere in between and beyond. If one were to turn the night sky into a lake, and take a boat through it, they would know what it was to be in my dream, floating past stars, watching them wave under water, tilting a gaze upwards to see one perched right above ones head.