Close your eyes. You’re running barefoot across an endless field. You’ve been here before. Every time you feel hopeless – like the world around you is a nightmare – you shut yourself off and here you are. The dream world you’ve built through hope. There’s only one tree, and it is bigger than anything else around here. When you’re tired, you lay against its trunk, letting your hair brush lightly against the aged bark. When you see the neon green light from a firefly touch your pinky, you know that it’s nighttime. You cup the little angel in your hands, watching its light go on and off as it jumps on the lines and wrinkles of your palm. Its green sparkles are like fairy dust. You blow against your palm, and magic flies away.

You squint a little. There’s a figure far ahead.

The fireflies are gone. It should be midnight. You push your hair behind your ears. He is whistling something familiar. You realize that you’re no longer sitting and you’re now on your feet. You recognize the melody and hum along. Some leaves fall from the tree and dance on your shoulders before reaching the ground. When you meet him, you realize that you don’t know him at all.

He reaches for your hands and as your fingers intertwine you hear a canary singing. It’s the first time you’ve noticed a bird in this field.

You open your eyes.

Your hands are still gripped to his and his eyes are still fixed on yours. You think to yourself, has this dream become reality? The two of you sit beside the tree as you rest your head on his shoulder.

You remember—your arms were being pulled and someone else, someone from your past was screaming at you. He wouldn’t let you leave. But he didn’t want to keep you around. You tried so hard to learn how to love through him but you learned how to heal yourself from his damage instead. What doesn’t touch your heart burns the shelter around it. You remember him smiling at the thought of someone else, or perhaps the thought of you leaving. You remember the fireworks going off when he told you that it was over. He thought you weren’t good enough for him; he thought he was better off without you. You were tossed away, unwanted, alone.

You lift your head up and look into the stranger’s eyes. You can’t recognize the color of them and then it hits you. They are not real. He is not real. Not yet. He is what’s waiting for you, the familiar yet foreign force that pulls you closer to the road you’re heading to. He is the future that you have chosen but not yet traveled to.

He is your soul-mate and until then any other hand that touches you will leave you bruised and scarred.