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He's crying when he wakes.

The man told him that some say that happiness is in the little things — and that it’s up to you to invite it in. He invited that happiness in when he met him, like walking into a house for the first time and realizing you have finally come home.

The sunlight is rich and honeyed when he climbs out of bed in the morning and kneads his own bread. When he washes his hands he lingers on the bubbles on his skin, and when he sinks his knife into an earthy home-grown vegetable he takes something out of the way the metal knife communicates with the chopping board. But he still shakes off the tears.

When you are climbing a mountain, and your hands slip off the smooth marble rocks above, it becomes useless to continue to climb upward — instead, you find yourself growing appreciative of the divots in the cliff side preventing your messy descent into the tides below. And so, when there is a deep hole in your life left unfilled, there is a kind of learning experience in discovering an appreciation of the things you have taken for granted until you were left yearning for more. After all, life can’t take away the way the light filters in through the frosted windows of your house in empty mornings, or picking a pine cone to pieces while waiting for the bus to arrive.

Yet it can take away the bigger things, and taking away the bigger things can be far too powerful to be outweighed by collecting little personal enjoyments — much like walking into a house and realizing you have finally come home, but only being able to stand on the threshold and look in. And as the weariness pools on his eyelids and he sinks into bed, he wraps himself in sleep and crosses the threshold.

And when he wakes he is there. And in the dream, spring is unwinding. In the soft purple mirror of the lake there is only the setting moon and the rising sun and the stubborn constellations that still linger early in the morning. The wind sings its tired, weary song, blowing ripples over the water, while he sits there on the side of the bridge with a man he had only met moments ago.

He didn't know how long it really was, especially when he was busy spending time picking out shapes with the remaining stars. He always thought that these moments seemed soft in their impermanence — sweet more as in lavender and nectar than chalky confectionery that stings the tongue and coats the back of the teeth, colourful like lights through stained glass rather than the reflections on an asphalt road.

What he doesn't realize is how quickly the softer things come and how quickly they depart, much like how spring leaves all at once but leaves something in the air with it. And when the realization meets him, he wants to say something but he can't. He wants to say anything but it's too late. He wants so much but his hands slip from the marble and he is wrapped by the blanket of sea.

He swears each time it will be different, he would say he loves him, but he can't. A honey drips through his hands and the stickiness makes it uncomfortable but god forbid it leaves, a pulling and twisting urge manifesting inside him as the stars drop from the sky and drip and ripple and drag through reality itself – an oil pooling at the bottom of reality, forming some far away haze of a mirage.

And through that mirage, he reaches to hold the hand of the one he loved so very much one last time but it passes through like a hand reaching into a cloud. He is so close, sitting right there, yet so far away.

And as he begins to see through the mirage a blinding light ensnares them, drowning out his sobs. He holds his hand one last time and fate takes the feeling away so fast he doesn't realise it. Time tears into little pieces and reforms, filling constellations in where there aren't any — and living itself becomes a solution left unsolved, patterns amongst stirring, mixing paint.

And when reality tears he sees himself in the warm satin edge of the reflection. And it all pulls through the hands and splits, leaving a smolder sweet and rich. Sweet and rich. Like him, the sugar-pulled light leaves sweetly, and he sits alone, solitarily picking through the pieces that remain.

He's crying when he wakes.