the January dream

 

(content warning for sexual assault, described. Posting uni work. I'm happy with how I've been doing, but I know I can do a lot better)

My friends have no idea where I am. I left them too long ago. I sit on a vinyl floor, my legs half spread, my fishnets caught in my boots. My back is arched against the wall, my abdomen creased forward, my shoulder blades sharp and pressed. I look ugly against the orange wall, underneath the yellow bulb. Something about the bulb burns my skin.The window is ajar, the floor is cold. My eyes are blue ketteled bubbles, boiling off hot confusion. 
I watch her crawl towards me from the other side of the room. In our halved height, we are equal. Her legs are longer and shaved. Her voice is northern, and I can’t understand where it’s from. I hear her speak from somewhere else, like it sounds off the walls, like I’m hearing her through my skin.
It’s layered and sinking slow, a boiling molasses of noise. It hurts all through me, but I don’t know it yet. I’m watching her tuck her coarse hand on my knee, on my thigh, up my skirt. With how she moved, I was so sure she was looking for something.
I’m watching the confusion spill into some unwordable feeling. It’s something between rejection and destruction. Her head moves closer to my ear, speaking clearly.
But I move away from my body. I move far away, leaving them both behind. Floating recklessly, my body gets trapped in hanging wires, and for one instant, I feel the world move through me. God is breathing through this melting body. The wires crack loudly by my ears as I wake.
I gaze at the moonlit monstera against the white bedroom wall. My body is shaped awkwardly, my naked hips half on the bed, my ass fully out. My girlfriend sleeps quietly beside me. I scramble out and try to find my notebook. I remember the words so much clearer this night. My pen traces the page blindly in the dark. She has work in the morning, a nine o’clock start. I work quietly. I write the words,
‘There is something in you, and I’m going to find it. You are becoming. Raw becoming. God is going to see us here’
I’m dreaming of something else tonight, I tell myself. I want to be somewhere else. The monstera drips. I watch the water form and drip.
The next day, I hear she is missing from a local on Twitter. Soon, I see her face in headlines. My girlfriend staples her face to electric poles, unaware of the connection. Her face is inviting me to search for her, though I fear she has found me. I fear there is a hand clasped around whatever she sought, and now she pulls at it. Closer, closer. I am staring at the sky, and praying for better dreams tonight.