I had this dream. I might’ve been awake when I had it, but it’s so hard to tell these days. I was reading in the kitchen, headphones so loud I don’t realize I’m burning the food on the stove until I smell it. I am frustrated, but when you walk in, I laugh. I find nothing funny right now, but I am laughing to ease the tension the way my mother taught me, inadvertently. I started reading again so you would tell your friends I’m smart, not hot. You’d tell them I’m interesting, not fun. Someone you like to have around in the day as well as the night. In the midst of the forced laughter, you touch me, and I want to recoil. I want to shrug you off and hold it against you how much you misunderstood me in this moment. But I can feel by the touch of your hands that it is not me and you and the moment. We are the moment. We are the seconds ticking down on the oven timer and the ever freezing air creeping in through the window panes, night after night. My dedication to being misunderstood is dissolved by more than the drink I made while cooking. It is against my better judgment that I allow the feel of you to put me at ease. I do not tense. I continue to laugh, but now at my own foolishness. My own desire to be jaded. All these years, my want to be so smart, and so interesting and such the woman who exists in the hour of the wolf, that I didn’t realize I could loosen my muscles. That I could give in to your touch if it feels good. That anything could feel good. I am laughing at my own idea of myself. And before you can kiss me through the laughter, I wake. But the comfort persists. Not as a dull ache, but more a fond memory. I let it rest on top of me, all its weight, and I’m forced to realize that I look forward to seeing you. I actually look forward to being in the kitchen with you.