Forgetting Sylva

Strength

In my dreams, I am whole. I am floating in the water, just hovering in space. Everything is lit by a blue light. The water is endless in every direction. I am not breathing: air is held in my puffed up cheeks, but I do not feel the need to return to the surface for more. My lungs do not ache from withheld breath. I feel no pain, no ache in my bones.

I spread my arms and kick my legs, and I am moving through the water, I am swimming, as if I do this all the time, and my strokes are strong and sure and practiced. My dreams are so different from life, because when I am awake, I do not know how it feels to be strong, to be durable. But in my dreams, I have never felt anything else.

I push through the water. It is infinity, but I am tireless. I swim and I swim and I swim until the word holds no meaning and my strength is the same as weakness and everything is nothing while nothing is everything. And still, I swim on. And then the light changes. Everything fades to darkness, and I am trying to outswim it, but an indigo ink swells through the water, sluggishly stretching towards me. I push faster, but the air hisses from my parted lips and water rushes into my mouth and I swallow and it fills my lungs and I need the air now but there is none there is none not here. I am choking; gasping; thrashing for air and a surface that does not exist. When the ink overwhelms me, I wake.

I do not open my eyes, as I usually do. I keep them closed and let my body wake before my mind. I slowly become aware of legs wound between mine, my feet against jean-clad calves; an arm around me, fingers curved against my ribs, holding me close; a chest at my back, so warm I feel almost feverish. I don't mind; it is pleasant. I feel lips against my neck; the soft release of breath on my skin, gently rustling my hair. I breathe it all in: chlorine and deodorant and Lance, and I let the sensations flood into my body. I gather them together and hold them tight, like a fistful of balloon strings that I do not want to let go.

Sometime during the night, Lance pulled up his knee, tangling our legs together, and his jumper pulled up. I tug it down, careful not to wake him, and settle back against his chest. I open my eyes and stare at the clock on my bedside table, and I listen to his breaths. When he wakes, it is easy to tell: his heart speeds up in his chest, beating against my back, and his breaths are slightly quicker against my neck.

"Lance," I say quietly, "why weren't your parents at the hospital for Tiana?" It has been plaguing me since he put me in that chair at the hospital; since he walked out of the room alone, and we went to the car. Since mum asked if he needed to call them, and he said no.

His breathing speeds a little, and he shifts slightly, but he does not move away from me; he holds me a little tighter, in that controlled, exact way that I like, the way that says that he knows what he is doing, knows how not to hurt me without treating me like glass.

He is quiet for a moment, but I know he is awake, and so I wait for his answer as only I can wait. "When I was young," he says, his voice slow and heavy with sleep, "my dad passed away." I keep my breaths steady and listen as he continues, though something stabs at my heart when he says it, so full of a longing note that is not present when he usually speaks: he misses his father. I would, too, but I don't have to. Mine is one door away.

"A few years later, mum remarried. She had Tiana." I can hear a slight smile in his voice, and it makes me wish that I had a sibling: someone I could love in that way. Someone to fill the void I will create when I am gone. Someone to comfort my parents, to keep them company, to console them with the fact that at least they have another child to pour their love into. I'd hate for them to be lonely when I leave.

"Then mum joined dad, and my second father went a little later. Tiana and I were shipped away to some relative, four times removed, or something like that." He pauses, clears his throat, but when he speaks again his voice is still slow and drawling, raw from disuse. "Greg is an old man, in his late seventies. He hardly stands up from the chair he sits in. I doubt he remembers I live there anymore. His world is his carer, sleep, food, and that damned chair." He shifts slightly, his knee fitting into the back of mine like a puzzle. "He doesn't know I exist. I doubt he remembers that Tiana's even sick." There is no bitterness in his voice, merely the tired statement of fact. I open my eyes and wind my fingers through his, our hands a tangled bundle against the sheets.