3 minute read
A Dream
from Spring Folio 2023
by The Folio
Anika Kotapally
We are outside and the sky is a painted blue, clouds impressionist imaginings of pink and white and grey. My feet are bare and the grass tickles where its blades press gently into my skin. Somehow I know that here, you will be kinder, here, every burst of happiness won’t be followed by a slow, trickling dread. Your face is open and lovely, and I think that I love you like this, with buttercups waving at your ankles and the sun hitting the half of your face that is turned towards me. My hand tangles in yours as you pull me forward and I let myself believe that, just for a bit, this can be real. After all, I can feel the sun and the grass and the wind as it rushes through this world and I think that this is enough, this version of you that I can love and that can love me, and this version of me that will let it all play out just like I always wanted it to.
We cut a path through a meadow, and there is nothing in our way, nothing to trip me, nothing but the clouds in the sky and the grass under our feet and your hand, always in mine. And when we stop, it is by a small wood, with light turning the leaves golden and birds singing away in the trees. I sit down under the leaves and you join me. It is quiet here, only the sound of our breathing disturbing it. Behind us the forest is bright and lively and I close my eyes for just a second to breathe it in but when I open them it is suddenly creeping away into darkness and every noise has stilled but the sound of our breath and I look to find you but I can’t see you and I turn around in circles, blindly searching, but I know you’re not there and then I blink and we’re sitting again while the forest chirps around us and you pull me up, warm and solid and we smile at each other and why would the world ever be a dark thing when your face is in front of me and your hand is in mine and everywhere you exist is a place I can reach?
We’re off again, then, and as you lead me somewhere new, I turn my head up towards the branches stretching high above our heads. In one of the trees, baby birds are learning to fly and one by one they hop out of the nest and flit into the air. I watch them until they lose their shape among the circles of hazy light in the canopy. The last one teeters over the edge of the nest and drops, lifting itself up for just a second, before hitting the forest floor, dead. And then I blink and it is flying away like its siblings and we are running off again, out of the woods and into the bright and lovely sunlight and why would the bird die anyway when it could live and when it had wings to take it wherever it wanted to go, away from anything that could hurt?
And then we flop down in the grass. The sun is still high in the sky, gentle and non-blinding. You hold my hand and I turn my face towards yours, watching you as you close your eyes and breathe. In profile, your face is lined by light and I think the sun might love you just as much as I do. We stay like that for what feels like forever and then you are pulling me up and behind your shoulder, I see a fox with a dead rabbit in its mouth, moving silent through the undergrowth. But then I blink and it is just the fox alone, slipping into its den, and it doesn’t matter anyway because we are running again and your smile is quicksilver and I only barely catch it and why would the fox need to kill the rabbit when the world is perfect and and the grass is soft and you smile like that at me?
We stop another time by a stream, the exact shade of blue-ish clear that all streams should always be, and let our feet dangle into it, perfectly cool and refreshing. Underneath the rush of water, there is a frog ribbiting, and on the other side of the stream, a bird pecks along the bank for sticks to make her nest. You push me down
6.21 [?] Digital Hannah Gupta facing and the sun is warm on my face and you are smiling like it is a joke and I remember now that this is a joke and so I pull you into the water too, and we are both smiling and laughing and nothing at all in this world can go wrong now, because you love me here, and I love you too.
