Cicada

That month, I was a drowsy amnesiac, drunk off the dregs of your attention. Sometimes, I dreamt about you peeling the skin off my face in one strip like the rind of an orange. You looked at what was beneath it and laughed. In other dreams, you didn’t look at me at all.

What was it like to never dream about me?

In the memories of our time together, there is no flesh in the keyframes. I can’t conjure your face, your limbs. I mostly remember my termination. You are immortalized in the sterile rug I sit on, the hardness of the wooden floor beneath me, a plain white wall.

I can’t remember exactly what you say then, only that it is swift, clinical, like I am receiving a flu shot, like you are my ward at some twisted clinic, one where the doctor can say, “I don’t think we should see each other again.” In an instant, you are a perfect stranger, one who wouldn’t dare touch me without latex gloves.

While you speak, I watch the fetid corpse of an embryonic non-future decompose efficiently and creep neatly down the hall, into the garbage disposal. I marvel at its resemblance to me, its proud reticence and feigned indifference. Honorless, a last grasp at dignity. We both prefer it that way—me and the corpse—to leave shoeless and silent.

In the After Dreams, I only see the back of your head. I sit, yearning and wordless, waiting for you to look, to see me for the first time, to return the skin to my face. I wait even though I know the version of you that took it from me has since detached itself from your body, a cicada shell. A thing I thought I loved, the shape of you, hollow like papier-mâché.

The dream is always the same. You never turn.

Deep down I know that even if you did, I couldn’t meet your eyes for fear I won’t recognize the new ones you’ve grown.

Months later, in Budapest, I’ll lay down in soft grass and scratch a bug bite on my ankle until it bleeds through my sock. 5,000 miles away in Wisconsin, Brood XIII emerges from the soil, awake from their own 13-year dreams. I’ll think of you again then, but only until the blood dries and my fingers go still.