Boys Like Flowers Too

white sand and wet floorboards

VIII
      CILLIAN WOKE in a cold sweat. There was perspiration on his neck. He sat up and a crisp wind chilled his drenched spine; he'd never fixed his terrace door in the end.

      He'd dreamt of her again. Though the woman's face was not that of his mother's, he knew it was her. Even in his dreams, Cillian's mother was as impenetrable, as unreachable as she was in waking life. He saw her standing on a beach with never-ending shores, toes twisted in the sand, her white nightgown fluttering in the ocean breeze, wisps of hair curling and uncurling about that face which he didn't recognise. Cillian ran after her, but the sand kept sinking under his feet; he couldn't find purchase. It kicked up in whorls of taupe behind him. She turned her back to him and he felt something grip his stomach and squeeze it. He tried calling out to her, but there was sand trapped in his lungs, his oesophagus. He tried to cough it out of him, he doubled over with the weight of it in his chest, the friction in his throat, but all that surfaced were clumps of white salt, like glitter. Now she was backing away from him, into the sea. Her clothes had disappeared, but he didn't remember her being naked. He only remembered the milky white planes of her skin, so soft, pliable; easy to slice through. He was certain even seaweed could do it. It terrified him. Cillian was panicking now, though he couldn't stop coughing. In his dream, he knew she was getting away from him, but all he saw were his palms, covered in dried clusters of salt that melted and turned into a molten magma. It poured torturously slow over his fingers and dripped, torturously slow, onto the sand below. He knew, somehow, that she was entering the ocean without him. When he awoke, he was left wondering whether it was his lot in life to stand forever on heaven's shores, watching the scintillating foam of celestial bodies churning on the other side without him. A withering fortress, guarded by an unrecognisable face.

      He checked his clock; it was four in the morning. He noticed there were little snowflakes littering his bedsheets like white sequins. It must have snowed in the night. Cillian knew attempting to go back to sleep was a futile charge, so he got up, closed his balcony door and propped a chair underneath the handle to prevent the wind and ice from wriggling in again. He changed his mind and went out onto the balcony to smoke. He was lucky dreams were such fickle things; his was all but forgotten in a moment. Cillian watched as they tumbled in the air, those light feathered crystals, chaotic and child-like in their flight, against the backdrop of a black sky. He even let a couple of snowflakes alight on his ungloved hands; as they melted, one by one, they left tiny tear tracks. When he returned indoors, Cillian sat down on his mattress and stared at the flowers on his bedside table. Another bouquet; orchids and delicate tendrils of jasmine; these smaller lilac flowers that Oliver later explained over the phone were called sweet pea blossoms. But in the gloom of his room, the flowers were all a pasty grey complexion, stripped of their allure, their charm and their glimmer. Cillian, throughout his life, had sometimes wondered whether he was meant for anything beautiful. He'd decided, almost dispassionately, as he got older, as the years swaddled him like bark on a tree, that he was not, though it was not something that bothered him a great deal; he was just not meant for beauty. Some people were not meant for beauty.