Life is But a Dream

Waking moments surpass our wildest dreams

There was an ambiguous disagreement. Something I’d done wrong, as I understood, drove him away from the house. His cousin, who I’d not seen since he’d tried to give me the crystal necklace off his neck as a gift for our then two-year-old while high on an unknown substance, told him he was being foolish, and he listened. He returned to me and our screen-entertained children, and we got hot and heavy. It was makeup sex, and it didn’t matter who was in the wrong because neither of us cared about being right any longer. He was hard. I felt ready. He went down on me and then said, “It’s like a volcano erupted here,” and I saw, in front of my eyes, a hairy vulva with dried blood flaking from beard exfoliation. “Let me wash myself,” I said. I drew a bath in a stone basin, brushing rusty dust from its sides with the first deluge of water, ushering the stream down the drain with the edges of my hand. Then I heard our children walk in on my husband. I turned and saw his bulge. The three of them saw my naked butt and my peeking face behind it, bent over the raised bath - the blood, then, just a shadow between my legs…

I was looking at the three of them when I heard their muffled voices behind a door. My face was pressed into our pink linen pillow.

I moaned, “Good morning, boys.”

My voice sounded hoarse. My body needed the extra sleep.

Henry walked in and crawled under the blankets on Joe’s side of the bed next to me. He was holding a board of magnetic balls that he clacked into holes with a magnetic pen. He told me the balls represented his friends at school, each of whom he hoped would come to his birthday party this weekend.

From under the blanket, I said, “That sounds lovely, hunny.”

Louis said, “Mama,” based on the volume, I thought he was walking through the doorway. Within seconds, his palms padded on our duvet at my side. I was right.

Joe lifted him on top of me. I peeked up from my cocoon to see his snotty upper lip and every tooth in his mouth smiling back.

“Mama,” he said.

Then, Joe slipped into the bed on my side. The edge I left was hardly sufficient for his hips, so I scooted further in toward Henry, carrying Lou along for the ride. Joe’s crotch pushed into my butt to aid my journey inward.

“I had a weird dream,” I said. “You were mad at me. Sam told you not to be.”

“Sam?”

“Your cousin.”

Louis latched onto my nipple closest to Henry, and Henry leaned onto the shoulder above Louis’s head. Their bodies were lukewarm against my contained heat.

“We started getting feisty - in a good way - but I woke up.”

“Saucy,” he said. “Your coffee is on, by the way.”

“Thanks, babe. I'm a lucky lady.”

My kids smelled like sweet milk. My husband wrapped an arm under me, elbow-crook to my waist, and pulled me in.

What wasn’t in our bed, wasn’t on my mind.

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