One rainy night, you are drawn into the whirlpool of dreams. After each dusk fades, consciousness turns into duckweed, drifting towards the river bank where reality and reality meet.
On the first night, you huddled in the turbid current, your hair tangled with broken branches. The immortal in plain clothes comes holding a bamboo raft, and the sound of oars cracks the thunder. He puts you in a cloud-patterned porcelain bowl, like rescuing a dying fish. You learn to recognize the path woven by moonlight in the tide.
The second night, the chirping of cicadas seeped into the cracks in the classroom. The ginkgo leaves he shook off when he turned the pages of the book just fell into the folds of your palm. You share a pair of headphones, and the current explodes the pink of cherry blossoms in the cochlea. The moment the corners of your clothes touch, even the chalk dust dances a waltz. Youth is undried ink, staining the entire dream.
On the third night, you kneel in front of the rusty door lock, counting the footsteps of the dead returning. The snow from last winter is still hanging on his coat, but you dare not touch it—for fear that it will dissipate like fog, like all dreams that will eventually collapse into foam in the morning light. You learn to find the true temperature in the folds of separation and reunion.
Dreams are like twelve rotating mirrors, each reflecting your pupils.
You piece together your fragmented self in the gasping of the drowned, the trembling of the first lover, and the lingering warmth of the dead. The stars migrate in the blood vessels, and you will eventually become the source of all dreams, the river that will never freeze.
To be added…
Text third person
Purpose: Everyone has the right to be their true self