In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

My life was a narrative I couldn’t parse, full of conflicting evidence.

“I’m telling you upfront. I need more. I need you over and over. So this is your out. Take it. Otherwise you’re mine, the way it should have been.”

“Fuck it. I don’t care if you’re good or bad. I love you, and you love me.

It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark. The life you’ve lived in sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like

underwater world, exerting invisible power. You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide. The moments that seem lost.

A wild, terrible knowing seized me then, a charge under my skin, the kind of tension a girl learns to read without anyone teaching her.

It felt like waking up on a Saturday morning when I was a child, bedroom full of sunshine, no cares in the world, nothing to do but play. Sometimes I wished I could dial back time, be a child again, stay forever in the before.

Wanting is dangerous. The less you want, the safer you’ll be.

I will love you for the rest of my life. I’m going to do it anyway; I accepted that a long time ago. But please. Do it with me.”