Sunday Night Dream.

“Catherine, you were always my favourite,” I whisper in her ear as I embrace her small head, running my hands over her feathery blond hair. It is short, like a boy’s, but when you see her face, you know she is a little girl. Except the others call her He, and I wonder why. Does she appear differently to others? What about her voice? It has the very ring of young femininity – she is only seven years old. It will be two more before she begins the long journey away from the purest period of her life. A place to which she can never return. Alas, she is good now and so, in my eyes, good forever.

Perhaps she is a shape-shifter. Perhaps she knows, even at her young age, the tricks you can play as a girl with short hair. She is funny. She likes to laugh a lot. She has many toys in her big white house. The one with the wooden doors wide open, with no lights on inside. I cannot see the interior except for its shadows, but I know it anyway. She is pleased when I express my love for her; she hugs my waist tightly. Ah, her soft golden hair. The wind blows wisps of it toward my nose. It tickles. The tickling feels good. She smells like a dream, like the candy of imagination.

Catherine, it doesn’t matter what the others say. I know what you are, and you were always my favorite. You are a vision – nothing more, but nothing less either. For those who pay no mind to the beings they meet in their dreams, you’d be but a memory. You would be abstract. A product of subconscious drives. You would not exist. You’d be a boy. But I know what you are, child-goddess. You are whatever you wish to be.