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“How should I put it?”
They smile, and it is the kindest thing you have ever seen, you think.
“It’s like waking up from a looooong dream,” they say, bringing their hands together, and then apart in emphasis. “The dream is life, of life, and you can’t remember any of it.”
You can’t. That, you are sure. Is that why? Because it was a dream? You’d like to remember, you think. Even if it was just a dream.
“But you still know how to walk. How to talk, to speak, to breathe.”
Yes, yes you do. At their patience in the gesture of a tilted head and an even kinder smile- you nod.
“Except, it’s not quite the same. It’s like being a child all over again, each step there’s a lightness you can’t place, a balance you must reach.”
Vividly recalling your fumbling about when you first woke, you agree. Everything feels so off, and yet-
“You try to speak, from your throat there is nothing, and from your heart there are words you did not know you needed. And yet,” they explain, as if they looked at you, through you, taking all the words you couldn’t seem to speak- “you breathe. You breathe and your heart beats and these are things you will never need to learn over again, but for all else that is- you do. You learn and you learn and you learn and no matter what, you are a child.”
A hand, gentle, rests on your head. It is kinder than the first words ever spoken to you, encouraging, after you awoke from that distant dream. It lifts a burden you had yet to realize you carried at all.
“And that is all you will ever be.”