Impossible dreams

Your kitchen,

 your living room

 and your garden,

 we spent hours and hours talking in all these places. They became the only places to where I really belong. A few months ago, I would be singing in the kitchen, teasing you while you cook, and insisting on helping with washing the dishes. I would be sitting on the floor in your living room stretching my legs and resting my back on your sofa, and every time you ask surprisingly why don’t I sit properly, I smile and tell you that I am simply feeling at home. I had plans for your garden, planting a lemon tree in that sunny corner, may be adding two or three bougainvillea with their crazy colors or waiting for the short Cairene winter to pass and then think of what can be added to the garden.

Everything now feels different, I visit as a stranger, my offers to wash the dishes now will sound awkward, spreading my legs on the floor now will look awkward, and planning what to be planted in the garden now will definitely be awkward. Guests should behave in a polite and even conservative manner, and that is what I have to do. What do I do with all my thoughts, that have turned into impossible dreams? Picking the peppermint from the kitchen’s window, don’t we have to stop drinking all this coffee, I would have….oh my god, I am even confused with the tenses, in my dreams, or simple thoughts as they seemed to be, I would add lots of mint and sugar and serve tea in large glasses, just like I used to drink it in Morocco. We would talk about our travels and as usual we would never finish any of our stories. I also wanted to check how cold the living room would be in January, I told you that I usually don’t feel cold, we would have mentioned the cold and the mild winters, and returning back to the winter of the revolution and may be we will go back even further to the winters of the school years. Who knows if I will still be welcomed as a guest in January, and even if I will visit you, I won’t stay till late, why would I? Watching a movie together, how can this turn into an impossible dream. Relaxing on the sofa, teasing each other, one of us would be fussy about the acting, the rhythm or even the genre of the movie. Or maybe we would have picked your favorite movie, or one of your favorites, I have always admired your taste in movies, ….in everything.

Here I am sitting alone, far away, answering dull emails absent mindedly while wondering what are you doing now. Do you miss me? Even for a few seconds? Do I visit you suddenly every now and then? Do you ever think of “What if….”? There are still so many stories to be told, so many songs to be sung, and even so many quarrels to be fought. This can’t be the end; this should not be the end. I am jealous, I am worried, and I am depressed, I can’t complain, what can I say, I don’t even understand what happened. Who would listen or understand, I was never perceived as someone who takes grave decisions, I have been lingering from one comfort zone to the other for so long, and now I collapse on a pile of impossible dreams, how accurate, impossible dreams!