Love far from home

There: it's great. We all have our secret explanations. You only have to reveal your secret explanation and she's not a stranger any more. We lie cuddled up together like two big dogs, or river gods.

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I woke up late today. The relentless sun entered with a maniacal intensity through the gap between my wall and curtain - its gold suffusing the room with echoes of itself. Outside, the sky was blue in an early spring in the northern hemisphere kind of way. It was beautiful in a way so wide and effortless that the only appropriate response is gratitude.

I vaguely remember my dream, which is rare. In it there is a cavalcade of us outdoors, on our way to some celebration. Beside me is a girl, an old friend from school - I have never seen her before. The rest are not far behind us, rambling, tumbling and jostling each other, rapt in their own respective parentheses of jubilation. She is wearing a summer dress and laughing and we are walking through a meadow and we are all incredibly happy for some reason. Her laugh is soundless and wonderful, like the sun, bright and mighty and full of colour, hanging high in a cloudless sky. Her eyes are shut with joy. Without thinking, I place my hand on her shoulder and pull her towards me. I place my lips on her crown to kiss her head, and as I inhale, I feel the tiny filaments of hair against my lips, and the scent of her is intoxicating. That's the thing that stays with me after I wake up, her fragrance. I don't recall the what it was, but I do remember how it made me feel - giddy and invincible - as if I had inhaled spring itself.

Recently I thought up this idea for a story, of a man who has the most hideous teeth. As a result he never smiles and speaks in such a way as to maximally conceal the contents of his mouth. I have not decided why he believes his teeth are hideous. It could be the result of a series of early peer inflicted traumas or a careless comment from an authority figure impressed upon him during the formative, highly susceptible years of childhood. Some kind of wound sustained during the development of his nascent subconscious. But anyway this causes him much distress when he falls in love with a girl, as simply being around her makes him grin, and he becomes anxious that the facial contortions that he employs to deny the girl a glimpse of his teeth are confusing if not incredibly disturbing to the object of his affection. This would lead to much drama and mental anguish and romantic frustration between the two and form the catastasis of the narrative. I also have not decided how it will end. Perhaps it ends with him revealing his teeth to the girl in an act of trust and vulnerability and he finds out that they were no more deformed than anyone else's. Or perhaps it is revealed that the girl and everyone else have all along harbored hideous teeth that the entire community have secretly, unbeknownst to each other, replaced with some kind of prosthesis. Or perhaps in the end he goes up to the attic where the toolbox and hammer are and smashes all of his teeth out in an act of defiance against their reign of tyranny over him, and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital when they ask him why he did it, he simply smiles.

I am soon 25. This is uncharted territory. I have given up trying to fathom what lies ahead. Will the days begin to blur? I have accepted that it is now May. I dispense with the fluster and commotion and say, Oh, well, yes I suppose it's about time. Maybe I am now accustomed to life's acceleration, which will upset me when the rate of change plateaus and eventually recedes like a fistful of hair in the morning.

When I enter the city the sun begins its dying dance and clouds begin to creep across the immaculate sky.

I am turning 25. maybe I ought to grow out my hair. I explore the university as the evening light grows dim behind massive clouds, and pale electric orbs line the walkways. The student union building is abandoned, the stark and vacant light unwelcoming.

I am at the student bar, next to the library being served by students. Having placed my order, I sit next to a group of 4 in a semicircle, as they discuss whether the NHS should fund orthodontic procedures and speculate the machinations of the transgender psyche.

We walked past a ramen shop, then an italian gelato store. 'Everything's falling into place for us,' I said.

Things thought are different from things themselves. How to turn out thoughts more realistic, how to transform reality to be more like our thoughts. How to reconcile the two, a happy marriage.