April Priyanka Padidam Last April I wrote a song in my dream. In it, my song was playing on the radio. I had my head sticking out of the car window, and I was singing along, all the way down Dream Street for all my dream neighbors to hear. I sang my song in the shower that morning so as not to forget it. I sang my song to you, so as not to forget it. And it became our secret, something we even kept from each other. That scared me a little. I heard you humming my song as we worked on a French project. Flipping through the dictionary, my eyes coming to rest on all the wrong words, I listened to my dream become your secret become the space between us. Today, the only thing I remember about the song I wrote in my dream is the way it made me feel. Like we had access to a part of the brain that nobody else knew about. But I doubt you remember any of this? just a skeletal melody and generic lyrics, ?Don?t leave me, baby, I love you,? or something like that. When you sang my song absentmindedly in the car, it suddenly occurred to me that it was true, I loved you. But nothing is ever as good as it feels in those moments. Remember how we used to look at each other across the classroom when something was unintentionally funny? Or when a word conjured up a memory from our collective? Somehow we always looked at the same time. Well, it all comes back to being in separate rooms, going through hell, and not being able to look at each other about it. I miss wanting it to rain, and when the air got heavy and the windows fogged up. I miss waiting for things that were on their way, like the bus or the summer or a text from you, or all three at the same time. I was always asking you to sing me the human songs. You were always forgetting what you had to tell me. It was always us in April, talking about what could have been our lives. ??
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