RECURRING DREAM

The rain had been falling for hours, pattering against the windowpane like the ticking of an old clock, relentless and measured. I sat in the corner booth of a small, all-night café, nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee. The place was mostly quiet, save for the low hum of street life outside and the occasional clatter of dishes from the kitchen. It was the kind of quiet that felt ominous, as if the air itself was holding its breath.

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I’d been there a while, not for the coffee or the atmosphere, but because the emptiness of my apartment was unbearable tonight. The kind of night when ghosts came calling, uninvited. The kind of night when the past felt closer than the present.

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The door opened. I heard it before I saw her. The low creak of the hinges, the rush of rain swept in by the wind. Then she stepped inside, shaking the water from her hair, her coat clinging to her shoulders.

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It was her.

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I couldn’t mistake her, not even after all these years. The way she moved, deliberate and fluid, as though time hadn’t touched her. She walked to a table near the door, her boots leaving faint wet marks on the café floor.

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I watched her as if in a dream. It had to be a dream. She was supposed to be a memory now, a closed chapter. Yet there she was, flesh and bone, rain-soaked and alive.

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Her eyes lifted, scanning the room, and then they found me.

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For a moment, the café disappeared. There was only her gaze, sharp and piercing, carrying all the weight of what had been and what never could be. My chest tightened. The years hadn’t dulled the pain. If anything, they’d honed it into something sharper, more precise.

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I looked away, staring into my coffee as though it held answers. It didn’t. Nothing did. I told myself it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be. People didn’t just walk back into your life like this, not without warning.

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I wanted to stand, to cross the room, to say something, anything. But my body betrayed me, frozen in place. Fear, maybe. Or pride. Or something else, deeper and more complicated.

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The minutes stretched, or maybe they didn’t. Time was strange like that in moments of high emotion. When I finally dared to look up again, her seat was empty.

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The rain had stopped by the time I left. The streets glistened under the glow of the streetlights, and the air smelled clean and sharp, like new beginnings or old endings.

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At home, I lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The red glow of the clock read 3:00 a.m. The same time it often was when I dreamed of her. A soft rumble of thunder rolled in the distance, like the echo of a memory too stubborn to fade.

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I closed my eyes, hoping for sleep but bracing for her return once again. Because she always came back, whether in dreams or on the edge of waking. How long would it last? I didn’t know. Maybe forever. Some ghosts don’t need to be dead to haunt you, and some memories don’t fade; they linger, alive and uninvited.

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​-Mark Gammill

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Recurring

 

Many years now gone by

she’d left without a word

at a little all-night café

a door opening heard

in walked an old friend

I’d loved without condition

like a hallucination

a dark haunting vision.

 

The rain she brought in

fell soft on the floor

she moved to a table

not far from the door

the return of the past

like a fast-moving storm

in a small restaurant

familiar and warm.

 

Her eyes raised and stared

directly at me

how familiar the pain

and would always be

unable to move

I just looked away

it's only a dream

is all I could say.

 

Then awaking I found

the clock by the bed

again 3am

flashing in red

a long distant thunder

like an echo from the past

these recurring dreams of you

how long will they last.

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-Mark Gammill​​​​​​

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