She wasn't there.
It'd been another sleepless night. The insanity of it all, sleeping till dusk and wandering the emptiness in between thoughts before returning to the warmth of meaningless sleep. It didn't make a difference, asleep or awake, the hours passed by the same way, filled with those illusory imaginings that substituted for reality. It wasn't as troubling as it used to be - her missing presence, the absence of that gentle certainty of embodied by the words she spoke and the ability to reach out and touch of her hand. The pain had dulled as well; those few treasured connections that had bled profusely when so savagely cut had hardened and healed. She was not there, and so it was a simple choice to remain alone, in the privacy of thinking and dreaming. It was always safe to think, and perhaps safer to dream, for dreams always allowed for a reality untainted by harshness.
And yet there were those other dreams, dreams which were largely ignored; not nightmares of the chase or monstrosities or apocalypse; not the terrifying but the terrible, the tragic. In those dreams she was there: elusive, present, pervasive. Sometimes she spoke, echoing the same words of gentle certainty, the faint pressure of her lips lingering a breath, a moment away. Other times she was distant, foreign, wanton - an object, a woman nonetheless still an object for the perpetration of violence and lust upon her. Some dreams she belonged, some nights she tempted, some she simply was - an existence in and of itself - but always, upon awakening, reality returned, and so did the pain.
Those dreams were better forgotten. Better to drown bitter reality with fantasy whilst awake, and create fantasy from the spectres of reality long past whilst sleeping. So life passed, and so it became easier to live with the fact that she wasn't there.
