The ghost in the machine

     She dreamt of you last night. She dreamt of you as though you were real.  She dreamt you were together, in full three dimensional form, no longer just words on screens, occasionally enlivened with punctuation. Or not.

     She dreamt you existed beyond 140 character limits, beyond a concentrated distillation of thoughts into a carefully selected choice of words. Or even a badly chosen phrase that wounds and bruises. She dreamt you in full. She dreamt she heard your voice, beyond the little she already knows. She dreamt that you and she spent time together, just in one another’s presence, revelling in the simple pleasure of harmony.

      She dreamt that promises were fulfilled. She dreamt that the months of patient waiting were over. She dreamt that the typed words that insinuated themselves inside her head, from your screen to hers, were true. She dreamt that your feelings were what she read, not what she experienced. She dreamt that you were real.

     And then the dream was over. You’re not real. You are the cursor on the screen that blinks and flashes. You are the facebook status update. You are the twitter notification, the text that arrives too late, the email recipient who never replies. You are the caress of an unsolicited compliment. You are the warmth of admiration. You are the glow of unexpected praise. You are the gentle kiss of consideration.   You are the slap of indignant denial. You are the sting of unworthiness. You are the whiplash of deliberate and intentional cruelty. You are the rebuke, the slap down, the withdrawal of contact, and the ignored plea for comfort and consolation.

     You are real only in the screens she sees. You are real only online, real only in her phone, real only on her television.

     You are not real. But she dreams you are. You are not real. But she wishes you were. You are not real. But she needs you to be. But you are not real. You are the ghost in the machine.