Talk Show Host

He laid there in her bed, nightmares danced across his open eyelids in the darkened room—she asleep, as much as she could be. Who was he to her? Though he was always timid to be cavalier with his emotions, with letting her know how he felt, it didn’t seem to be a problem to her. Love was a word that signified anything more than like, and she had liked many a guy before him.

He would listen to how she would describe her past “loves,” and always he would wonder, how was he described when they weren’t together? What would she say about him to her old friends, to her random ex’s? Could she even convey a fraction of what he would when describing her? Or was he exactly like the rest, would he be stored away in a “special place” within her heart, with the rest of them?

His notion of love was unwavering and eternal; everything else was infatuation on a perpetual cycle. He knew he loved her, and that relied on what she would tell him, how much she supposedly loved him in return, but how could she never show it if it really was love?

They had settled into a routine of monotony routed in tired monogamy. He wanted only her, and no one else, but she didn’t seem to want him… this isn’t to imply that she wanted someone else, on the contrary, it didn’t seem like she wanted anyone at all, at least not specifically; instead she seemed to search out the comfort of another so as not to be alone. This was a cruel and unfair joke to him; to hide yourself away from solitude and search for comfort in the arms of another was a cop-out, and though he could understand the fear, it wasn’t anything he could see himself giving into so easily.

These nightmares were more surreal and menacing than anything else he had ever encountered. How was he to respond? What was he to do show her that there was something better than searching for simple comfort? There would never be enough he could show her, mainly because he didn’t seem to be the one slated to open her eyes, only to keep her attention for the passing moment.