Various Works

Scattered Dream, Far-Off Memory

 

I knew that my dream of a beautiful wedding was fading away when the smell of pancakes, eggs, and bacon began to fill my nostrils.  It took what seemed like several minutes for me to finally exit from my reverie; the white, black, turquoise, and other shades of blue and green that had filled the dream blurred as I slowly opened my eyes.  The darkness of the bedroom was all that they could perceive until I became more aware of my surroundings.  Almost instantly, I noticed the fact that there wasn’t a body to my left.  With the smell of food once again reaching my olfactory receptors, I knew that she had already gotten up and had begun to prepare breakfast.

 

I turned my head to my right and took a quick glance at the bright, neon green numbers that shined from the alarm clock that sat upon the nightstand a foot or two away from me.  Some time passed by before the figures managed to permeate my mental fog.  They read “2:35”.

 

“It’s not even three o’clock and she’s cooking breakfast?” I asked myself rhetorically.  “Of course she is,” I answered.  “That’s part of the reason why you love her.”

 

I continued lying upon the queen-sized bed for a few minutes until I was completely awake, at which point I tossed the black, blue, and grey blanket off of me.  I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat on its edge, my hands almost automatically going towards my eyes to rub the last remnants of sleep out of them.  Then, I pushed myself off of the bed with my hands and stood up, pausing a moment to allow my body to regain some balance.  I grabbed my black pajama bottoms off of the floor and stepped into them on my way out of the master bedroom.

 

As I opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway, the strength of the aroma increased.  However, it was not the food that drew me to the kitchen; it was the gorgeous woman preparing it.  The hallway ended after a dozen or so steps and I walked through the small part of the living room that was adjacent to the kitchen.  My naked feet touched the cool tile near the time that I saw her.  Her dark brown hair, which was usually kept down and reached the middle of her back, was set in a somewhat messy bun on the back of her head, two chopsticks holding it in place.  She wore a turquoise sports bra and a pair of sleep pants that matched it to some degree.  She stood in front of the stove, her arms and hands dancing around the various skillets upon it.

 

Approaching her from behind, I wrapped my arms around her waist and placed my head in her shoulder.  “I love a woman who knows that she belongs in the kitchen,” I whispered, a crooked smile on my face.

 

“I love a man who doesn’t make misogynist remarks,” she returned, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips.

 

“Very funny,” I said with a chuckle.

 

She smiled and stuck her tongue out at me before quickly kissing me.  Though brief, it contained every bit of the love and passion that the rest of ours did, the same love and passion that had been growing since our sophomore year of high school.  She broke the kiss first, turning her head and attention back to the food upon the stovetop.  A few moments afterward, I removed my arms from her waist and my head from her shoulder and backed away and leaned against the counter that was about a yard from her.  I crammed my hands into the pockets of my pajama bottoms and watched as she resumed the preparation of our breakfast.