twin flames

I dream of us, and the dream hurts with an almost-pain, one that can barely be recalled. It’s like blindly running a fingertip over a forearm dappled with bruises, and hitting a sharp spot here and there.

The dream is a red and smoky room. It’s the smell of wet suede and lipstick over toothpaste. Girls dance slowly as though their limbs are drifting in thick syrup, and we watch them but only see each other. There is a mirror behind our heads, and icy drinking glasses on the table in front with whole glacé cherries on the stems. Candied maraschino. We pluck them free with our puckered lips and the fruits burst full of liquor, burning the edges of our tongues.

Our tongues are two halves of a mahogany bascule bridge, and we must join them together for safety, but now the fire claws its fingers up into our mouths, dragging its raging body with determination behind it.

The burning bridge twists like a mirage and disappears into a tunnel, darker than the static pupil of  dead trout. And falling from the bridge, our limbs flail so helplessly that it is pathetic. You’d laugh with embarrassment, your knuckles pressed into your forehead.

The tunnel multiplies like a series of boxes, endlessly distorting and then spiralling. A song starts playing in the background, or maybe I only just notice it. It muffles as though sung through a dessert dish.

The singer’s mouth is a zero, a warning, and then she’s a seagull flying backwards, open beaked, into a sky of such a simple grey-blue,

I’m telling you, you could cry at its shrugging serenity after all those flames.