The Anatomy of An Aguamala

A train had hit me. The Kick. “By upsetting the equilibrium of a dreamer you can wake them from a dream and return them to reality.”

My head was buzzing and my lips felt soft like I’d been kissed by little moth wings in my dreams. My hair a mess of tangles, clenched and curled by lovers’ hands. I could imagine it fanned around my pale face like the crown of great Ra, a solar helix framing my dark curls; sunlight illuminating the steely tracks that would soon host a steam engine barreling a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour to strike me.

I was willingly hit. Realization hurts less in dreams. Insomnia tugs at your eyelids, teasing and straining, and it’s uncomfortable. But to indulge, to give into delusion, allowing yourself to feel something you’re not supposed to—

It tugs at your heart strings sharpens a pair of butcher’s shears and cuts those bastard strings right to their core. Your heart falls to the pit of your stomach and gets lost amongst the bile, consumed by acidic, forbidden lust. Until you’re empty.

Or awake. Like an amnesia patient I had to think, What day is it? Where I am I?

I had to remember, try to map the celesital constellations of his freckles in my mind. Did he even have freckles? In my perception his face had been clear: feathered eyebrows white blond hair, angular jaw, jade green almonds set into a gold-flecked stone, the facade crinkling in the corners as I coaxed a smile.  I could trace the contours of his cheeks and the little wrinkles beside his eyes with my phantom fingers…

I felt his skin furrow, pulling at the corners, falling into my hands like a mask:

Consciousness.