Lillian and the Stars

This happened 5 years ago, but I remember it too clearly.

For it haunts me at night and keeps me awake for the remainder of the day. I pray that one evening I'll drift off to sleep and I'll return but either way I relive everything, every second as if it was imprinted in my brain, its a tattoo on my face, a bruise covering my arm.

Lillian.

It’s 2:34 am and I’m barely deciding to get some shut eye. It’d be the third time with week I’ve stayed awake until 3 am. Usually sleep is my best-friend but the summer heat has made my sheets intolerable and so I find joy sitting under the ceiling fan in the dining room. Today, it was a whopping 107 degrees. Either way I made my way to bed. I turned off the lights, closed my laptop and set it on my nightstand. It wasn’t until I closed my eyes that things changed; that’s when my life shifted and the stars just became brighter.

The sun had woken me. “Dhara! Where are you!?” shouted a muffled voice. The voice was femanine but nothing like my mothers, who was the only one I lived with. The voice came closer, “ I know you need your beauty sleep but this is just overdoing it” said the woman as she walked into my room with a comforting white smile. I sat up in my bed speechless as she walked over to me and grabbed my hand, lifting me to my feet in an instant. I don’t know what was happening but it felt so natural. I felt like I knew her, and she knew me. I was dreaming and that's the only rational explanation, it was all just another lucid dream although it’s been years since I’ve had one. My train of thought was broken as I heard the woman walk out the room leaving me with the words, “get ready we’re going out”. But to where? This wasn’t my house, nor did I recognize anything about it other than pictures on the brown desk on the opposing side of the room. It was a picture of the woman and I, marked Lillian and Dhara 1/18/20 which is 10 years and 5 months from today. “Lillian, that must be her name”, I thought to myself. She’s beautiful.