Sometimes I dream I’m dying. It starts with a faint sensation, as if there were less and less of me. I’m trying to breathe, stronger, harder and finally, struggling for air, I suffocate. Then I wake up.

That first gulp of air after always bewilders me. The world swirls around, fantastic colours flash in the dark. Slowly, they disappear to my breath’s rhythm. I’m acutely aware of my own frailty. A strong, interrupted heartbeat animates my body like a broken drumbeat of a yesteryear parade. Woozy with the memory, I feel it slipping away from me, so vivid still, almost real enough to touch. Cold droplets of sweat slide down my back, alien and heavy. I shiver.

Last time, it happened at Gianluigi’s house. He woke up and, fearfully, watched me. I couldn’t guess his thoughts.

‘Bad dream’, I said, feeling his hand on my shin. Soft but firm.

‘Do you want some water?’

‘No. Stay.’

He watched me as I was falling asleep. It felt like an accident, something that shouldn’t have happened. For a moment, I thought about telling him more, but the vision was too intimate.

Then sleep took over me once again.

When I woke up, Gianluigi was preparing breakfast. Mute autumn light leaked into the room. We ate and talked. None of us mentioned it. Gianluigi never asks about difficult things. This is why I chose to see him – I can keep to myself as much as I want. Perhaps he doesn’t care much about me. Perhaps, we could live without each other.

After we finished, I left his apartment and walked down to the nearest tube station.

It was a Saturday morning, and I longed to go home and take a bath. I crossed several streets populated by similarly looking houses, cut as if life could fit their neat form, and passed through a small wood or park. It was hard to say – swaths of northern London stretch, split by small archipelagos of verdant shrubs and trees. They were greying then, and the rotten stench of decaying leaves teased my nostrils. The landscape glistened in the rain. It was as if the whole world lulled itself to sleep, somehow oblivious to this tacky display of undesired negligee.

I wrapped myself tightly in my woolen coat, thinking of immersing myself in hot water. Biting, minuscule drizzle ran to my marrow. There was no hiding. That was the wettest season on record. I quickly passed the remaining streets, and soon the belly of the underground swallowed me. The station was eerily empty. I followed its tracks, well-acquainted with the metallic smell. The corridors trapped the man-made wind, which rolled the tails of my coat around my legs. It felt as if somewhere in the insidious bowels of this monster, a gale raged. It carried on its spectacle, fed by the sound of tracks and wheels.

Down the escalators I went, a solitary figure, detached from normal life and its course, in this city inhabited by millions. The throb of faraway trains rolled on. I turned into another corridor, an empty beehive’s tract. I enjoyed being alone. It seemed to me I was intruding on something, or maybe my presence made me feel significant against the absence of any other. I wanted to make silence. I carried it within. Yet, these corridors never go fully quiet. The city holds incessant noise. The closest it comes to silence is in my apartment, but even there, I can still hear the hushed melody of the city. It remains ubiquitous.

I closed my eyes, only to open them at the sound of the train stopping. I stepped into the carriage, and the hubbub of voices welcomed me. So, the world hadn’t changed. I let the train shake me forward down its sinuous way.

I wanted to lie down in hot water.

*

The room is grey in November light, and shadows grow heavier with each second. Halfempty shelves and a place to sit. I only keep space.

Sometimes, I wake up and dwell in my clockwork life measured by electric time seeping from flickering screens. There is silence. There was. Then, I bought a mahogany pendulum clock, an unshapely space-eater. I keep it here, in the middle of the room, where they left it, its hand stopped shortly after, and I had no courage to push time back to its sombre rhythm. I kept listening to my own, and time, like a translucent pearl, filled with breath. I grew weary. I watched it, wondering if time in this city was different than anywhere else.

I live in the other room. It has marks of a person. Yet, this person is unknown to me. She doesn’t feel herself. Her room reflects the cold calculation with which she arrived at her idea of what life is... or should be. I have no desire to know her. Her orderly life stifles me; there is no space for a mistake, for breath... Everything is measured and performed according to a pattern. Mealtimes, labour time, resting time. A ghost in her life, I am. Her slender body moves, marking its forgotten reservoir of lifeblood, as I watch her naked in the bathroom mirror. Her step is full of languor. She seems to be scared to wake up. She stops and tries to see herself. There is never enough time for such a whimsical thing to do. She is me, I think, and giggle.

I come closer to the mirror. My eyes’ reflection reminds me of the seas roaring in the storm... yet there is stillness in them. They tell me nothing. Perhaps underneath, I have the vehemence and force to arrive at... where I would like. Perhaps... I have... I have...

I can’t see it... I can’t see through it.

It’s possible there is nothing I want to get to.

In this thoroughly carved life of a stranger, I listen to the voices I don’t want to hear and don’t hear those I once used to. This is how I was told my life should be if I were an arduous student, taking my lessons and applying them. This is the image of success, they told me. Yet I never felt it. I carry a void.

Maybe that’s why sometimes I dream I’m dying.

Like that morning at Gianluigi’s.

It doesn’t take much to recover. The incessant wake of life takes over, and I float, float...

forward to the source and away. Its pace is too frantic to call a halt and grasp what is there, at the bottom, or behind these eyes... The motion obfuscates the image.

It’s growing darker and darker. The clear contour of the day blurs, and I decide it’s time to leave again. The phone vibrates. A quick glance tells me it’s Gianluigi asking about my whereabouts. Makeup. I paint my skin carefully so that no one can see me as I am. My eyelids and lips in strong basic colours. Blue, red, black. Blue, red, black. When I do enough of it, not even I can recognize my face. I know well its superficiality. One cannot hide from oneself.

I’d like to whisper something to myself or, even, keep myself from going. I’m messaging

Luigi that I’m heading out into the night, asking him to meet me.

In the dark, the city grows fantastic shapes. Unrecognizable from its bright side, it enthralls and scares. The streets stretch in unknown directions, leading to new districts that seem not to exist in the plain light. They entice me with their feeble ephemerality that, at closer inspection, displays signs of rapid decline. Night at once hides, enhances, and lures with its chimerical nature. Sometimes, at its edges, I glimpse a detail of the daily parade, yet it always disperses before I can give it my full attention. My legs carry me forward. Motion obfuscates the image.

Again, I descend to the underground. The train goes through the dark corridors noisily, and I glance at my own strange reflection before it stops at another station. The face that for a second stared at me was unfamiliar; it showed the first signs of age that I prefer to ignore. I put another layer of makeup to avoid going so bare in the world. It’s fortunate I hardly ever make time to observe myself. Life elapses, one station after the other, and I wake up to yet another dream. Only, the dream is someone else’s.

The uncanny notion disappears as soon as it forms in the growing hubbub of the machine. There are no reflections, only multitude, a thicket of human flesh huddled together by some bizarre coincidence.

Then, I notice her. She sparkles. She stands alone, grasping onto the pole and watching me. Her gaze betrays a roguish nature. She wears her dress bright, long, and almost transparent. Drawn to her, I want to speak a word, something that would make her look around and respond. Suddenly, I have a strange impression that I will see her again tonight, and I can’t stop lurking between the rippling surface of strangers’ outer garments. I want to know where she’s going.

Slyly, I check the phone, looking for a word from Gianluigi and leave him a short message that, after all, I stayed home and decided not to go anywhere, that I need rest, and I know he won’t think too much of it, not after that morning. I decide to follow the girl down wherever she goes. Our eyes meet once again. She gives me a quick, gibing grin and disappears behind the curtain of strangers. I lengthen my spine, looking up. I don’t want to lose her from my sight.

The mass of bodies thins with each station, but she lets the train carry her into the swatches of northeast London. She sways with the machine movement; she gives it no resistance. Her grace is that of a wild cat, at once falling and fully in possession of her body, animated by a rhythm within that no one else can hear. From my seat, I can only see the veil of her fawny hair and her palm, ornate with rings.

The train stops abruptly, she lets herself drop with the move, spins around and looks into my eyes, hanging off the rail:

‘Come.’

Frozen, I watch her, pretending I didn’t understand that she was speaking to me.

‘Don’t. I saw you watching me all that way. Come.’ Her voice knows no refusal. I let her lead me.

Emerging from the station, she ushers me through a maze of darkened streets. Emptiness intensifies the volume of our steps. Firm, rhythmical knock of the girl’s shoes and my timid, uneasy patter betraying that I don’t have any idea where we’re going, or where we are.

I see her shoes occasionally sparkling in the streetlights; other than that, it’s dark and silent. Occasionally, a distant drone of cars. Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest decision to just go into the stuffy, viscous November night. Or maybe there are only coincidences and irresponsible decisions that keep us alive. If I venture into this strange branch of the city, I might escape from yet another dream of my death. I think about Gianluigi and whether I also hover at the edges of his day.

‘What’s your name?’ I call after the girl. She turns and looks at me; from her expression,

I can conjecture amusement.

‘As if this had any meaning’, she laughs. ‘Suppose I’m Lily, or Anna, or Sarah. What difference would that make?’

‘I need to call you something.’

‘Do you?’ I hear her smirk and I rush after her, as she doesn’t slow her step. Maybe she’s right. What would she need a name for? She is.

After a few more turns, we step into the lights and noise of the street. We walk past closed shops and cafes and enter a dimly lit, inconspicuous bar, which looks abandoned from afar.

The woman grasps my wrist tightly and pulls me down the corridor. An eerily danceable saxophone music plays in the background, and the silhouettes blurred by motion surround us.

‘Two gin and tonics, please’, she says to the barman. I judge her choice as boring. She looks at me straight. I want to escape their warm, greenish hue. It seems to strip me of everything.

She sees me.

‘Why did you stare at me like that?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know,’ she mocks me. ‘Bullshit.’

Even if I tried to articulate why, it would probably escape me.

‘You have it.’

‘It?’

‘Yes.’

She laughs now.

‘You really are impossible, aren’t you?’

Not knowing what to say, I watch her as she pays for the drinks. A man wearing black glasses and a fedora enters the room and walks towards us. He wraps his arm around her waist and laughs.

‘Twinkly star, here you are. I looked for you everywhere.’ She gives him a smile and pushes the drink towards me.

‘Have fun’, she says and disappears with the man in another room. I remain sitting by the bar. Twinkly star.

The night unfolds, song after song. Strangers sit next to me. They talk, and I respond. I speak little but listen to the words I have long ago forgotten. They come from a different universe and life, where time isn’t clockwork, and measures don’t seem to follow it. The strangers’ lives are populated by the crowds of long-dead artists and intellectual conversations. All labels. All hollow dummies. I realize they are better at hiding it, or maybe it doesn’t bother them that they carry a void. What if we all do? Perhaps this is the thing to do.

I drink. When I drink enough, the world swirls around pleasurably. So, I keep going. At some point, I stand and walk towards the exit. In the corridor, someone passes me, and I let my back rest against the wall. Soft and pliable. The voices are singing. A well-known song in the background speaks of all our thoughts as misgiven.

‘Twinkly star.’ I feel someone’s hand on my shoulder. ‘Twinkly star.’ Her voice whispers in my ear. ‘Do you want to leave?’

I lift my lids and see her greenish eyes. They have a caring expression. I think that it would be nice to sleep.

The song says there’s still time. There’s time to change the road…

‘Do you want to go with me?’

‘Yes.’

She lets me lean on her. Conscious of my weariness, I yawn. She giggles. Once again, she leads me through a labyrinth of murky nocturnal streets, and suddenly I’m lying down on a bed that smells of her. Fuzzy and musky, the scent almost dispersed, as if it hung in the air for a few days, leaving only a subdued tone of its glory.

‘Dear’, she says and strokes my hair. ‘Let me help you.’ I feel her hands undressing me, and I surrender to her like a baby.

She slides her two fingers down my spine and whispers, free of all of this I want to abandon:

‘You poor thing. Who sold you these dreams and when? Just be.’

And I am. Soft and pliable and ready to become.

*

Golden-glowing, sun-coloured, her skin seems to radiate light. At once frail and strong, she spreads her sleepy forearms gracefully. A web of bluish veins enmeshes her slim wrists. I close my lids, and the sight’s iterative nature becomes clear. Rivers on the map, roots of the trees growing their paths into unknown to them directions, prints of seaweed pressed on sandy beaches, midribs and veins in the foliage, snail trails on the concrete... Ineluctable modality of the visible... And in this small room, in bodies, we are. Where?

A look around reveals an apartment fit for a representative of the petit bourgeois, rather than a beloved of Apollo’s muse. She’s no artist. She’s none of what I thought of her. I feel an urge to abandon her in her slumber and walk down the street, in the sun. I slowly put my clothes on and sneak out like a thief, leaving her stretched on her bed, a lazy animal in the streak of November sun. Bright, anomalous. I know that there will be no return. The subtle click of the door sounds behind me, and I stroll down the pathway with my steps hushed by the carpet of rotting leaves.

There will be no return. No.

I recognize my surroundings as north London and walk down to Highgate. Cleared of autumn mist, the world seems affable enough to move on its surface, and I discard the idea of descending into the dark bowels of the underground. I roam through the streets until I stumble into the cemetery. I buy the ticket.

As I walk, it crosses my mind that so many people lie here with a short description or a motto. I find it morbidly bizarre – to forever speak the language that wasn’t ours in the first place, filling it. a tightly fitted form, with words coming short. And in the end, the tragedy of being told in the words that were already a given. Long before coming into this world. Slaves to the inherited language. What is it of us that really belongs to us? What is ours?

... And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do...

I will be told in the words of others, too, but I can’t say who these others will be. It strikes me that it’s likely I have already told myself in the words of others. Who has planted these dreams and desires under my skin? Who whispered words, sweet like serpents’ hiss in the orchard into my ears? Who? Who? And why did I allow them to become mine? I look down and notice a wine stain on my skirt. I want to wash myself close to dissolution.

Directing my feet toward the gate, I notice swans in the pond, white and immaculate, against the filthy surface. As if the world couldn’t touch them. Why did I allow the world to shape me into an image of my unlikeness? Why didn’t I resist?

I walk down the city’s streets, stopping to bask in the morning sun whenever I encounter it. Soaring, slender constructions illuminate its light, honeycombed with tiles and glass. They swarm like a beehive with human flesh and voice. Only, the city would feed no bee. Sun flashings last but a blink only. 

Permanence of transience. The only axiom there is.

I turn my back on the light, and for one short moment, I think I know where I came from and where I’m going. I carry on.

After a day of walking, I glimpse the last glimmer of sun of an early winter day reflecting in the timeless clock face, in the crack between the door and the frame. It’s fading as I slide into my bed.

Sometimes... sometimes I dream I am.