Welcome to Aloft
— a story of drifting between the life you know and the one you can’t quite wake from.
I don’t write stories about heroes that fight their way through battles. Often, I write about survivors, people caught in the spaces between what they want and what they endure. Aloft is one of those stories.
At its heart, this is about a woman suspended between two worlds: the dreams that pull at her, and a life that no longer feels like her own. Maybe you’ve felt that before, that sense of floating through days that don’t fit, haunted by the idea that somewhere, you stepped off course. Lost yourself, lost what it meant to be you. Forgot that you mattered.
I’m sharing this story in serial, letting it unfold the way dreams do—slowly, unexpectedly, and sometimes with edges that blur or cut.
I hope you’ll follow along, linger, and see where it takes us.
— A.M. Self
1.1 A break from dreams
A soft ringing tightened the thread, tugging me towards the edge, that lip you hover around just before you fully wake. That serene moment where you have choice. A choice to drift back or come forward into consciousness.
I clung there, eighty percent of me still leaning into the clouds. I could feel him, still smell him. Not a heavy manufactured scent. No, this was raw, uniquely human, uniquely him. The memory of it alone could bring me to tears in waking moments, but here it tugged me deeper down and away.
We were in the grocery store. He laid his hand on mine, his attempt to gather my attention. It was a big hand, warm, with a little patch of hair on the outside edge that pleased me. The callouses on his fingertips pressed into the top of my wrist. My skin woke. It always woke for him.
The bell again. I turned, and the world snapped into place. My eyes cracked open. I could feel the puffs around them. The sun was up, raging into my room like it had a point to make. I had left my windows without blinds for that very purpose. I wasn’t always wise.
I shut my eyes again. Tried to remember when we were, where we were. All I could see now were his lips. He grinned. That crooked little tooth was still there. I don’t know what it’s called, the one between your front tooth and the canine. His was twisted. Not much, but just enough to drive me into madness. Some dentist years later fixed it. Ruined it with a cap. Why did he let them do it? He knew I loved that tooth.
Why is everyone always trying to fix precious things that don’t need fixing? We cover up all the real beauty, but who am I? I am just as guilty.
Ring.
It registers, the ring. I have to get it. It’s the dog. She’s on her third ring. If I don’t do it now, she’ll leave a puddle on the floor a foot wide, and I don’t have any cleaner, and I am not going to the store today. Not today.
I sit up, looking back towards the bed. The soft white sheets look back at me. Spotless. They are new. So much in my life is new. Crisp, a harsh contrast to how I feel, and it only makes me feel softer, doughy.
The pillows have taken a familiar shape. If I squint, I can almost see him, face down, head turned to the left. Broad straight shoulders, tan even when the winter is drawing the color out of everything around.
I shift towards the edge of the bed. I feel his hand find my wrist.
Stay.
It’s just the sheets, a clump of them around my wrist, but God, it feels like him. Like him a hundred times, with that same sweet tug.
Just stay.
“Hold on Noelle. I’m coming.”
I shout to her as I pull on my long robe and skid into my sandals.
She’s at the front door with an urgent look on her face. The bells clack against the door. She darts out just as the cold rushes in, cutting between the layers of my robe. My breath catches but I like it, the cold.
She is pushing around in the bushes, so I shift out onto the front steps.
“Come on granny goose. Make it a quick one.”
I’m not sure she hears me, or if she does, she certainly does not acknowledge my words as she roots around. I am on her time now, and I will wait as long as she wants me to wait.
I need coffee, and judging by the shape of my shadow, a hairbrush. I forgot to braid it before bed, and now it was a wild, stringy mess.
I can’t find her for a minute and my heart skips several beats until I see her little dark tush stick out from under a bush.
“I shouldn’t let you out here without a leash.” I say, as if she is listening. She isn’t. She found something, a new smell.
With perfect timing, the neighbor materializes up over the hill. She is a runner, and she never fails to catch me out in the morning. The poor woman has seen me in my robe more times this year than any man-friend. She waves and I wave back. God, I am a mess. She can add it to the list of times she’s caught me in a state. Maybe I am a fun story she tells her friends. She looks like the type to have friends. Loads of them, they have lunch and drinks. Sometimes they have too much, and they giggle until someone comes to pick them up.
Not me. I am what you call solitary. I wish I could say lone wolf, but that would be bullshit, and I don’t have time to lie or pad the truth anymore. I am no more a lone wolf than Noelle.
She rushes out from under the bush. Her business is done. She has snot on her nose, scrambling away from a clump of leaves attached to her collar. She is panicked. I pluck it off as she swirls around my legs, then between them.
“You wouldn’t make it long in the wild.” I say to her. This time she is making eye contact.
I follow her back into the house. She is always first. She clicks off to the kitchen and I follow her there too.
I stopped drinking coffee a very long time ago. It’s only been four months, but it feels like a lifetime. I didn’t want to take anxiety meds, and my doctor gave me a list of things I had to do and not do to make that possible. Some mornings, I think the meds might have been a better choice.
Good old doc didn’t think it was funny when I told him that a life without coffee gave me anxiety. He did not find me funny. Ever. The counselor, she thought I was hysterical, but he would only look back at me and ask why I felt the need to entertain him. That question did give me anxiety. It was one I never answered.
I leaned against the fridge, waiting for the kettle to boil. I let my eyelids drift closed.
He was walking in front of me. He reached back, taking my hand. His eyes flashed when he turned. That tooth again. That smile. I wanted to kiss him, but there were too many people. We were in a bar now. God, how long had it been since I’d been in a bar? Maybe fifteen years, certainly not since Holden.
I know there was music and noise from all the people around, but all I could hear was him.
“What do you want to drink?” His voice was raspy from overuse. Maybe he was getting a cold. I wanted to tuck him into bed, make him soup, but here we were in all the smoke instead.
The pot beeps, and I am back. My kitchen.
I loved this kitchen once, begged for it, even fought for it. Now it just felt big and empty.
I poured the water over my tea bag, trying to find him again while the bag floated around. I couldn’t. He was gone now, maybe for a while.
I should have put in a dog door.
- A.M. Self