I am moving through a house of people, each one held in a different level of friendship or relationship with me, each one carrying a certain claim on my time. I feel the need to spend time with them, to be with them in a way that feels real. I do it individually, one at a time, as if attention is a hallway and I am walking it with my hands full.
At first it works. It even feels sweet.
Then it gets overwhelming because time and attention are constraints, and every minute I offer to one becomes a minute I owe to someone else. I can feel them waiting somewhere off to the side of my mind, like notifications without screens, like doors with hands on their knobs.
One of them is a woman, and I am a girl, and I love her. I am intending to spend quality time with her, in my bed, to get to know more about her, to learn the texture of her presence. Family is around. They carry expectations that hover in the air, expectations shaped like “proper,” shaped like “this is what we recognize.” I decide I will do my thing because it is my business, and still I notice myself moving two ways at once.
True to my love.
True to onlookers.
My body keeps trying to look compliant while my heart keeps trying to be honest. I have fun and I feel frustrated at the same time, and my mood oscillates as if my attention is a pendulum. The closest word I have for it is dissonance: two harmonies attempting to share one instrument.
Now that I am up, I wish it occurred to me to close the door. I imagine it plainly. One simple click. One boundary. I picture us on the bed in peace, the room allowed to become what it is.
Somewhere else in the dream-stream, a smooth ride appears.
I have a car, a small one, playful, something like a Mini Cooper, and I love it. The ride is a little bumpy and I appreciate it anyway. The bumpiness feels like being awake in the world, like texture you can trust. Then a story arrives from someone about someone who had a smoother ride, and I know the someone is me. I know what ride I had, I know what I loved.
And still the dream presents me with an opportunity: the idea that I had a better ride than what I remember. Something like the Cooper designed for the Japanese market.
Japan arrives in me as a place my waking feet still await. It arrives as an impression I carry, an idea I assembled from hearing and believing that some places refine what they touch. A place where you breathe better in apartments, sleep better in beds, eat better in kitchens. A place where even a small car holds you differently.
So the dream gives me two rides.
One here: fun, a little bumpy, loved.
One there: smooth, bright, playful, the weather perfect the way a kid imagines the Caribbean. The road feels friendly. The air feels tuned. I realize I have been in both at once. I realize I can hold the memory of the bump and the memory of the glide without choosing which one counts.
Later, it’s men who are my lovers.
They are here for my attention, and I forget that I invited them. I feel bothered and amused in the same breath, like someone who planned a party and then got surprised by the guests arriving on time. There are others around too, people who witness the scene the way rooms witness footsteps.
I am interfacing with these lovers in what I call a woman body. Their bodies are male. The room contains layers of expectation again. Curiosity moves through me. I want to be proper. I want to be free. I want to be present.
So I try to do it sequentially. Individually. One conversation at a time, like a line I can manage.
It becomes impossible.
Each time I am with one, I think about the others. I wonder if he will wait. I wonder if he is upset. I wonder which one I want most. I wonder what I will say next. I wonder what I am doing. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, until wondering becomes the soundtrack.
And then the one I’m with says something, and my awareness catches a blank spot.
Ask me what he just said?
My mind offers fog.
My mouth offers something anyway.
Words come out of me as if they belong to the scene, and somehow the conversation continues as if what I said works. The dream keeps moving forward on the momentum of social coherence even when my attention is split into branches.
At one point, one of them brings me food while I am already at a restaurant with another one. He says it’s a piece of fish I left last time. The plate looks like a cross between fish and chicken. I feel hungry. I smell it. Delicious.
I take a bite.
It tastes like chicken and fish at once, exactly the kind of hybrid my senses enjoy. I eat while I speak with him. I eat while I keep one eye on the invisible queue of other lovers waiting somewhere behind the next door in my mind.
Then there is a moment with an image.
One of them shows me a photo of an entrance. In the dream, I already have a memory of it. The photo is proof of something I remember from inside my body. The entrance is a door framed with plants, tall and beautiful, like a crossbreed between a tree and a vine, like a palm that learned how to climb.
Vibe‑palm. 😂
The plants look alive in a way that feels intentional, like they were grown to guard and welcome at the same time. I can feel the threshold quality of it. I can feel that if I stood there, something about attention would change. Something about access.
Time keeps moving, and the dream keeps offering scenes faster than I can metabolize them.
Someone starts talking about the political situation, and my body reaches for humor the way it reaches for breath. I make a corny joke. I say we should all immigrate south, and I illustrate it by picking up a shovel and starting to dig a hole, as if underground is south. I feel funny and accurate. I feel my own delight.
The room gives me faces that hold their seriousness. Their eyes stay level. The air stays sober. My joke sits there like a bright object that belongs to a different conversation.
The dream continues anyway.
Now that I am awake, one thought arrives with the clarity of hindsight: I had other options.
I could have arranged a table. I could have arranged a bed. I could have made one scene that holds everyone. A shared dinner. A shared conversation. A shared container that makes presence easier, that lets attention rest instead of rotate.
Then I wonder what I would wonder if I did that.
Would my mind still branch?
Would it settle?
Would it find the chord instead of the queue?
I hold the question like a plate I haven’t tasted yet.
And I hold the door I didn’t close.
And the door I might close next time.
And the vibe‑palm entrance, vivid as a memory that already knows me.
Thank you for taking this trip with me. I had fun. I hope you do too.
— Stomari
Filed under: Lovers in Line.
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