"People have them all the time."
But I don't. I mean, I haven't.
Not even as a child.
Never woke up in the night, even.
Never felt the fragments of an illusion
sticking in my skin, edging me out of bed,
like I'd been lying
across pieces of broken glass,
lying there, unaware,
until suddenly, I realized I was bleeding.
"And you say it's definitely him,
always him? And you recognize his face?
You're sure you're not planting him there yourself?"
She looks at me.
"Sometimes women do that," she says.
"They see things the way they want them to be."
But I don't. I mean, I wouldn't.
Not even as a kid.
They said I lacked imagination, actually.
Said that even then I needed
rules or guidelines or something
set in stone to follow. A follower.
I couldn't even think
of an idea for an assignment
on my own
I used the example
provided. I got an A for content
and a C- for originality.
"So you've got some romantic notion that this man is
your destiny. That he's coming to you at night while
you're sleeping and he's sent by God,
or some other un-named, unknown divinity
whose mission is to realign the paths of wayward women
by reuniting them with old lovers who've,
by some giantic blunder of nature,
been unduly torn from them?" She stifles a chuckle.
"Is that what you're telling me?"
But I'm not. I didn't say that, necessarily.
And as a child, yes, I too, as a child, was told
by my father that everything
had a cause and effect, and one
could not exist without the other.
He was a doctor, too, taught physics, taught me
how to see
that my life would always be
a series of causes
and an endless line of effects
that would constantly lead me
in all sorts of crazy directions, but this
I told you. I never had this before,
this recurring thing, this every night
thing, before. Never had an effect
of being wakened in the middle
of the night, no cause in sight,
stuck so hard with little splinters of something,
something that won't let me sleep,
something that has to be him.
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