Sometimes dreams are just dreams

*my brother started writing this piece about an experience he watched me go through. Some of these lines I wish I wrote, others are organic. This is definitely still a work in progress.*

The story begins like any other.
Love seemed like the answer for so much
he longed for her touch, for her eyes to meet his but
she was simply a canvas.
A vapor.
She was a breathless character,
a voiceless face,
she wrote pages of nicknames,
events, and on most days,
she would tell him
I love you.
Locked him within this picture
that she was creating to make sure
he didn't fall for anyone else.

He can see her, but she isn't real.
His eyelids are movie screens
scenes of the first time he gets to
embrace her, snow flakes, scarfs
running his hands over hers, tracing
love notes into her palms.
This is why he sleeps, why he hides behind closed
eyes and hopes that when he opens them,
someday,
he wont have to dream anymore.

She doesn't know him.
She lives states away with no clue that he exists,
or that his city is more than fabricated lyrics.
Kalamazoo is as much of a joke as his ghost desire
to know the real her.
She doesn't stand with him in his dreams.
She doesn't do anything more than be herself,
living the life he once believed he was apart of,
and it was never her intention to leave him out.
But she never intended to include him.

He wishes that just this
one thing
would go his way.
He's been playing this game for way so long
singing the same song, antique music box heart.
After losing his mother to a disease he couldn't fight,
losing his father to a fight he couldn't win,
all he wanted was for love to ease some of the pain.
Just to gain his smile back, even if its just
for a day.

They both sleep alone. Living yin yang life's,
overbooked and unemployed,
diet coke and xanax, dancing with feet and words,
wondering when the right person will come along
and make their dreams come true.

They will never know that their hearts play the same song.