Writing and Photography by Jeff E. Brown

He was gesturing for me to follow him to the shower. He never showered with me anymore. I knew what this meant-he actually wanted to have sex with me for the first time in almost two years. I was giddy, incredulous and then awake. It was the worst kind of dream. Something you’ve consciously and subconsciously craved for so long is about to happen, except it’s actually just a very realistic dream, moments before your alarm.

You can’t measure it with mere disappointment: that is too mild and not nearly accurate enough to describe the feeling of knowing you are back to your pitiful trap of a life. Lonely, desperate and disenchanted with everyone and everything. In a state of depression that no therapist could possibly bail you out of. So what do you do?

You grab your cell phone and stumble off to get ready for work, feeling like the dream was another in the long line of karmic reaming you’d come to expect. There is no looking forward-there is just the stillness and emptiness of the present. A situation that rivals something Kafka might have imagined. Lost love and nothing but a shell of a body, autonomously operating until the day that it doesn’t.

© 2021 Jeff E. Brown. All rights reserved.