He was a close stranger. A phantom in my heart. I fell for an unknown ghost and now he haunts my dreams. In my dreams though, he is not a spirit, but a man with flesh and feeling; a reality that never came to be. I reached out to grasp his hand and nothing reached back. Outside of REM we were nothing. We felt nothing. In my daydreams, he was there, sitting in the back of my skull with a smirk like he had won something. It was as if he was watching a movie of my emotional responses and laughing at them like a comedy. I became taffy in his apparitional clutch; unable to move or think. Much like a rag-doll, I lay at his bedside, waiting to be played with. But he would never pick me up. How could he, a nebulous creature, ever be capable of fulfilling my dreams? Someone who is stuck between worlds and unable to free himself, could never have the freedom to love a real woman.