How Should I Love You?

For ten years, this grand dream was the most secure and tender prison I built for myself.

Every night, falling asleep meant embarking on a sweet date that had lasted ten years. In the dream, the coffee he handed me was always the perfect temperature, the sunsets we watched side by side never ended, and even the rain sounded like music playing just for us. It was a love more perfect and certain than anything in reality, an entire planet of sweetness hidden away in my soul.

Until one ordinary morning, I felt something cool beside my pillow: a piece of candy that did not belong to this world. It was the one he had gently placed in my palm the night before, as he coaxed me into taking my medicine in the dream.

Reality had never given me such happiness, yet the dream had generously gifted me ten years of it. Now that this imagined sweetness had begun to take physical form, was my inner demon finally baring its tender fangs, or had a soul trapped in time finally heard my unchanged call of ten years and answered across the boundary between reality and illusion?

“So the one who healed me was never the dream. It was me, loving you day after day for ten years.”