It’s just a dream was meant to be for nightmares. To comfort and dispel, drive away the clinging shadows. But now, in the bedroom she kept dark night and day with sheets draped over the windows, it was a threat. A warning against looking away.

Just a dream. Waking up with weight and warmth on the other side of the bed again, with the woman she had buried eight months ago lying there only asleep, the curve of her hip and cadence of her breath caressed by the quilt they had bought together, just a dream. That was all it could be.

Yet she sat there watching, cold on her side of the bed, and the numbers on the clock kept climbing and falling, light kept trying to pry around the sheets and curtains and failing, and she didn’t wake up.

Didn’t dare reach out to touch, or try to sleep, or look away for more than the moments a living, blinking body demanded. Like any dream, as soon as she tried to prove it real or took it for granted, it was sure to end.

Better to just sit and watch. Other needs had gnawed at her for a while, but they had blunted their teeth to numbness now, and the only need left was to not let it end. Better to have her that way, at least. Lying there asleep, as if they could rise and live again together soon.