Chapter Text
There’s a man with me on the couch.
At least, I think it's a man. Maybe it's a woman.
It's probably something else.
It sits beside me—or appears to. It isn't here.
It isn't elsewhere either.
I don’t think it’s real. I can see it, feel it, touch it. But I don’t think it’s real.
It has all the qualities of something that isn’t real: its skin is cold and damp in that way that not real things so often are.
It has your eyes; those green eyes with flecks of gold. And it looks at me, in that way you so often did: Head slightly tilted like—like I was so… intriguing, some great mystery.
But that’s all it has, because it isn’t real. It sits there and it tries. It tries, but it isn’t real.
And no matter how hard it tries, it can only ever have your eyes—nothing else. I won’t give it anything else.
And so all it can do is sit there, next to me, with your eyes. Waiting, waiting for me to give it more. But I will never give it more. No matter how much I want to see your smile again.
So there’s a man with me on the couch, sitting next to me. And it isn’t real, and it has cold, damp skin—and it has your eyes, and it has your smile.
And I don’t know how much longer it will remain not real.