Coffee and Breakfast

Woke up this morning dreaming about the possibility of a man.

A handsome stranger and I spent a night together where it was only he and I.  Making a mess of the bed and each other.  Going from room to room as the night went on.  Clearing surfaces, finding the walls with our bodies, languishing over every touch, creating friction as our bodies intertwined.

Woke up to make him breakfast with the smell of him still on my skin while he slept.  I went to my kitchen where I didn’t have to worry about the food or my pantry.  I didn’t have to worry about if I had food, or how much it was going to cost me, how long I would have to work to buy the flour or the butter.  So, I set about the kitchen with the feel of him still inside of me and made him homemade cinnamon rolls with pecans and raisins, with a glaze of orange and amaretto on top.  Cooked some sausage and plated it on my antique dishes with some orange wedges.

Setting a table outside where there are no neighbors to spy on us, or watch as we eat, a canopy covers the patio protecting us and the table from the sun’s rays, yet allows the breeze to cool the air, where we can hear the birds singing and talking to one another filling the air with natural goodness and serenity as if wars had never started, and death had never visited our hearts.

A linen tablecloth with antique dishes I bought just in case there might be such an occasion eventually.  A pitcher of ice-cold water filled with fresh oranges and lemons.  I bring a coffee pitcher – the one from Ireland I bought because one day I am going to visit if not live there – filled with strong, rich brewed coffee not like the weak swill I am drinking now, setting about the cream and sugar, the salt and pepper, fresh cold butter, the silverware, and the linen napkins.

I don’t eat everything on my plate because I don’t have to anymore.  I am back to where I was before, eating to live well, not having to worry about food because I’ve lost the weight, and once I’d lost the weight my body kept the metabolism of the skinny me.

It is not a rushed breakfast.  It is not even morning anymore.  It is our morning, and our breakfast.  It is a luxurious morning where I get to look at his face, and I forget about having to be clever, about having to wash and do laundry every single free moment of my life, where the possibility of a greater world could exist because it would have love in it.

As he goes to kiss me good-bye, my hands touching him feeling his unshaven face and I don’t want to let go.  He starts to tell me good-bye, but he stumbles on his words looking in my eyes.

Please do not read too much into this.  It is just a dream.  It is not intended to be any specific man.  It is just a man I hope to meet one day.  A man who would want to love me enough to touch for real.

I started to remember these were the sorts of dreams I used to have.  When I went to see Death Wish yesterday watching Bruce Willis (who I nearly punched through my windshield at a gas station only as a defense mechanism there was a threat, I raised my fist to defend only to find Bruce Willis in the vehicle across from me laughing with his family) sitting next to a hospital bed, I remembered all the years I sat.  All the years I sat next to my mother’s hospital bed.  I sat next to her nursing home bed.  I sat next to her bed at home while I took care of her, and a part of my brain went elsewhere away from the pain, away from the loneliness, away from the unanswered prayers, away from the place I was living in, to a land where dreams were real, where men were real and actually attracted to me enough to want to do anything to make me theirs alone.

So, if there is anyone out there perhaps in a hospital unable to do what you really want to do, or are off somewhere unable to…well, just unable, then maybe if you read this too I won’t be so alone anymore.

Perhaps one day this could be real for me.

Perhaps one day it could be real for you too.