Dreaming of You Quotes

“Today,
I walked into a coffee shop
but no one was there who looked like
they could completely fuck up my life and inspire
a mediocre poem and a half so
I just left.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“I want everyone to believe in me eventually
but I want it to be You
who finds me, plain as day,
blooming among the flowers,
shining from the hill,
taking shape everywhere I shouldn’t,
obvious and made of light.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“I want You to keep chasing me and I don’t want you to know how far I would go to find out the truth of something, to scratch an itch that will tear the whole universe open.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“I text you, Dang, I have plans! but what I really mean is
what is better than me
and my imagination? What is more loving
than all of the ways I can invent You
touching me?”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“All of my lovers, all of my friends. There is no song that belongs just to us.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You

“I wish I could watch a video of us watching a video of us. Your butt is so cute I could bite it. Your laugh is so adorable I could lock it in the basement and visit it on evenings and weekends.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You

“my work is all puns stapled together into the shape of a woman who is really listening to you and laughing at all the right times”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You

“If I say your name now and you
turn your head and you do not recognize me
then fuck, I don’t know.
Then I am dreaming
of you dreaming of me, again.
Then I’ll wait here till you’re ready and while I’m waiting
I’ll make my home here,
in this undefinable space I can try to name and then try to name again
until I give up on names altogether, just let them go through my
fingers
like water, like trying to remember the freakiest moments of a
nightmare,
but it’s too late—I’m already awake and the day is about to start and
I have to set up a bird feeder and propagate more plants today.
I have to hang up signs.
I have to open up the windows.
I have to look far out
to see that line
where the water
becomes air”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“I wear the songs out.
I leave them out in the sun.
I forget to feed them.
I throw them in my backpack.
I get on my bike.
They rattle inside where they get scratched up
by my keys, my chargers, my pens, everything
I think I need to carry
with me as I make my way to You.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“Is it masturbatory to think I am going to be the song
you can’t remember the name of?
That You’ll tell the person next to You
(who is like me except maybe cut in half and bleached
and doesn’t care about social media so she only takes pictures
of trails and bugs), “It goes like ba-ba-ba” or maybe it’s “Da-da
-da-da” and she doesn’t know what you’re saying and takes out
her phone to check and the ba-ba-ba and the da-da-da-da is stuck
in your head for the rest of the day and also Your life?”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“When I look at You, a song gets stuck in my head.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“The feeling of steadily leaving this place but still remaining inside of it.
We say we miss them but we don’t mean them.
We mean the autumn we discovered them,
when we had our headphones in and felt like we were
a movie. We mean the way the breeze felt on our skin that day,
while we walked toward our best friend’s house.
We mean words put to music that belong
on the refrigerator of our hearts,
a magnet that holds up a picture of our nephews.
We mean a history that was never written for us,
those words that found themselves in our mouths
and danced out so easily.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“I want to appear to You in sandwiches,
water markings on the ceiling,
mold above the toilet,
patterns in woven baskets,
a scatterplot depicting
the correlation between people who lick
their ice cream and people who bite
their ice cream and whether or not they lie
about how many books they’ve read.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“Melissa thinks wanting
to be loved
is just wanting
to be watched
all the time.
She moves as if
she is always
on his TV screen.
When he looks at her,
the beginning
of a song starts
to play. Somewhere,
a finger pushes a
tape in and a screen
starts to buzz.
This is a feeling
somebody has felt
before but she still
thinks it belongs to her.
She listens to the last
concert again, dances
to it alone in her room.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“6'5" Looking for Something Casual
that Has the Potential to
Be Something More ;)

[In a dimly lit restaurant]
Is this a date?
[Walking back to a car in a dark parking lot with a gun to my back]
Is this a date?
[In the trunk of a car]
Is this a date?
[In a room, tied to a chair with one, dangling light bulb]
I actually would say that I’m like, an introverted extrovert.
[Locked in an attic dressed up as a doll with a bowl of water and
a plate of food at my feet]
Yeah, I don’t know, I just have such a weird relationship with social
media!
[In a submarine unaware of what day it is]
I’m trying this cleanse, have you heard of it?
[Chopped up into little pieces and dispersed into the ocean, little fishes
feeding on my hands]
So, do you have any siblings?”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“What is the word for getting
someone to fall in love with us during karaoke?
We know that if somebody loves us,
if they really really love us,
they’re watching us and every bad thing that ever happened to us sing.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“New York is cool because you only start
dating someone so that it's easier to pay the rent.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“You and me are having sex to a movie
Or during a move?
Or at a move?
In a conversation with?
At least we're un the dark enough
so I don't have to feel bad about my body.
At least there's only this light from the actors' faces,
floating across my skin.
I'm afraid even my orgasms have dimples.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

“Cuidate, okay? On to the next disaster. We will be watching you! Not to creep you out or anything.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You

“She tells me that’s just the way we do it—we look death in the face. She doesn’t know about the death industry. The money made from pumping a body full of pink liquid, how they peel a face off then back on, prick needles into the corners of eyes to make you look like you’re sleeping.”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You

“Your music makes me feel lonely I must be responsible for it I’m alive —ARIANA REINES”
― Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Dreaming of You