as you sleep

A Story by Farzana Z

This could be read as an excerpt or a standalone piece.

The smoke and concrete reminds of places you haven’t been yet. Underground, there is the smell of metal and hot air rushes into your face. You think of places across the world where there are cobblestones and clear water. You imagine glass spires where you see tall gray buildings. Clear water in the place of dirty snow. In the alleyways, stars explode and ignite towards the sky. You wish relentlessly but always you will straddle the two worlds. Where there was once symmetry, there is possibility, light.

Often, you try to write of a life that does not exist to you but is alive all the same. You are a ghost day to day but perhaps sometime that could change. People always disappoint you. Still, you hold on to hope. Some nights you are marvelously alive. These times, you are the one who keeps the stars spinning, the precious fragments of light caught between your hands and the tips of your eyelashes. Somewhere between the smoke and mirrors, the summer flowers and the cold light of day, you exist- a flicker, the merest hint of a song