I often dream of a girl standing before a dingy marquee on a cold city street. We're alone.
She has long, dark hair and I've never seen her before in waking life. I always appear rather bedraggled in these dreams, but she's always neat and lovely. We're wearing coats--she's wearing boots of some kind--usually the kind with the heels. We stand there before the theater and neither of us speak. I don't really know why. Eventually, an old-fashioned cab pulls up to the curb--looks like a 50s model--and the girl stands on her toes and kisses me. I kiss back, but I don't embrace her. She smiles, but it's forced. Then she climbs into the backseat of that taxi and disappears into the darkness. I stand there alone on the sidewalk and watch her go. I can never determine how I feel at that moment, but I know that I don't give a damn about the movie that's playing.
Sometimes I wonder what these dreams mean. Maybe they don't mean anything at all, but they're still intriguing all the same. Why are some dreams so vivid and why do they reoccur while others are forgotten as soon as the alarm clock starts ringing? Some say that everything in a dream represents something else. They say it relates to our respective realities somehow. Maybe it does. I don't know how I feel in the dream, but I know how I feel when I awake. I feel lonely, depressed, lost. I feel like I should have chased after that cab. Maybe I could have caught it at the next light. But I didn't. I just stood there with my hands in my coat pockets. And it doesn't matter how many times I have that dream, it always ends the same. Maybe the girl is wearing different clothes and maybe the title on the marquee changes, but she always kisses me and leaves. Every damned time.
One might think that maybe there's a meaning there somewhere. I don't suppose I'll ever know.