Bleach House Dream

White walls. White ceilings, floors, white everything. This house is milk and bleach and lilies. A stain on my memory in the shape of a man comes around the corner, arrests his movement as he lays eyes on mine. I startle, and the room gets darker. Butterflies the color of tears seep out of my white on white dress. I can't stop shaking, and he carefully, so carefully cups my face in his hands. His eyes, so intense, devour me. He says something that I can't understand, comes a step closer, threatens me with his closeness, the ending of a solitude I didn't know I felt. So I run. I run through rooms, around corners, down twisted staircases that weren't there before. I run and he follows, barely three steps behind. I can't find a door so I break through a window and hit the hard pavement with bare feet and a stitch in my side, and I ask myself, what happens if he catches me? What will running accomplish? He's a step behind me now and I know somehow that he can't go past the end of the sidewalk, which is barely a stride away. My body slows as if I'm pushing through gelatin, but I'm desperate to keep going, just one more step, just one. I launch myself into the air... and I keep going up. I've become a bird, and with an aching sense of loss I realize somehow that he's no longer behind me. I turn around and he's gone. I wake up and the feeling of loss is still weighing me down.