She lived in the twilight when we spoke of fire.

"What are your dreams?"

A friend asked me this question.
I think of it often.

I wish I knew how to tell you some of the things I've seen lately.
Words are never enough.
Music, sometimes nothing more than a glimpse.

A winter sunset over rolling hills,
The names of which I don't know.
Finding an abandoned dirt road that led towards them.
I remember climbing to the top,
Watching the sky illuminated by a torch borne of cold fire.

"What are your dreams?"

She told me that I could be the one.
We had just met.
For a single moment I wanted to believe it.
I knew better. I've heard this before.
Nothing more than simple lusty attractions masked as the stirrings of love.
I remember her sweet yet acrid kiss on a ferry heading to Seattle one night,
Her taste a subtle mingling of smoke and mint.
I remember her tears when she told me she was to wed another.
She ran away from me shortly after that
Like I was Death himself,
Finally come to claim his due.

I just wanted answers.
Too many questions in such a short amount of time.
There were none.
Just smoke and mirrors.
And a kiss.

I receive messages from her on occasion.
She wants to know how I'm doing.
I never respond.
Wouldn't know what to say.

I like the silence better.
Things are prettier without half-assed excuses.

"What are your dreams?"

I wish I could show you the lights of watery cities quietly passing in the long night.
How my heart lives somewhere between the winding paths that I follow at high speed,
And the glittering fingers that always beckon subtly
from outstretched steely hands.

I would share with you how the music playing in my car is somehow always appropriate,
No matter the mood.
Subtle swirling sound that matches the patterns of blurred pavement at night.

"What are your dreams?"

Standing face to face with someone I haven't seen in a long time.
Pleasant person.
Pleasant conversation.
I am very different. See my surroundings with different eyes.
I didn't realize how much I had changed until now.
The world seems much larger to my heart.
I can't understand how I put myself through such hell for this pretty face.
Seems so silly and inconsequential now.

I can't even begin to understand who I was back then.
If I ever had to meet something resembling that self-pitying, flimsy and weak "me",

I would kill him.

It would be the kindest mercy I could bestow on something so sad and pitiful.

"What are your dreams?"

I wish I knew how to explain how my insides light up when I perform,
How strangers can become the greatest of new friends in the space of a song.

I wish I could show you how the hugs of nieces and nephews always make the shadows disappear,
And how the closest of friends and family can tease a smile from a stubborn and sullen face.

My dreams consist of the point in my life when
The upcoming sunrise will clash with an eventual sunset,
And my mind will alight as a peaceful riot of fire
Wrapped up in a tiny song.
I will call it my future.