His eyes smile at me, running forward, tilted, beaming. My mother calls him Lewis, and he is a son, mine, of me and him, of him and I.  His eyes are sapphires, gleaming with delight, his hair a messed up tousle of chocolate, just like his father’s (and just like mine).


He’s wearing scruffy jeans and a striped green top (I had expected nightmares here tonight, this is quite different). His face is pale, paler than his father’s, pale as mine, and although that man’s not present here I know just who he is, in fact I’m certain. He must be about four, all Spiderman and cheap toy cars, running at me across grass with stains on his new trainers. I love him - it is overflowing, and I am happy, happy.


Content because I see in his eyes a smile his father gave me, once, and every day thereafter. This world is a utopia for he’s here, my little boy. I never wanted boys before; not until I saw them in my mind running about kicking a football with their father, swimming at my in-laws’ house, him teaching them. He swims like a fish, their dad, slips under, disappears, not a bubble till he surfaces, the other end, hair plastered to his head. It was him who made me want my little boys.


I see them tussle, tangled laughing in the grass of the garden of our house, the house we’ll buy, me and him, home to our babies. We have no home except that in each other. They’re on the ground, giggling, father tickles son, “Dad, no!”, I take a photo, frame it, hang it on the wall for all to see. I’m proud of them, my boys. I want him to have his boys. I want the boys for me.


My boy is here - I feel him breathing deep beside me -

                                - curled up in bed with us, frightened after Halloween (his dad jumped out at him to suck his blood, and made him giggle). Still, the nightmares of vampires prevail -

                             - his leg slumped over mine, arm on my waist, mumbling in his sleep and naked after making love to me.


I love my boys, I do. I cook them meals then let them play, boy games, electric races cars on a track that loops around the room, under my feet, reading a book and smiling, beaming, grinning at them as they laugh together, joining in then my husband tickles me, viciously, as our boy tries to help him out. I sit with my mother on a beach and watch as my dad and his dad and my boy play football, grandpa and father against my boy and always, always he wins.


We take him on holidays, him and then later his little sister, my girl, my Lottie, and I spoon her baby food and watch as my boys tuck into chips, salted, drowned in vinegar,  on holiday in France. At Christmastime, tears open presents under the tree, his trains and planes and automobiles, and Lottie’s dolls and ponies and tights. Stripy tights to go with the tutu she’s so fond of wearing, my girl, my Lottie. And at night their dad will hold me, before they clamber into bed with us, squealing, scared of lightening.


And when they get older, he will hold me, and he will be Chris again, when he holds me at night like he always does. And in the morning we’ll tell each other our dreams, like we’ve done since the beginning of time, every morning, without fail. I have my boy, my girl, and I love them dearly, then at night I lie sleeping in the arms of the king of my heart. I will scrawl my name, my married name, in mist on car windows, because even after twenty, thirty years it still delights me to see his surname written after my first, to see the Mrs. And when he tickles me, the kids laughing hysterically, we will look to each others’ eyes and see that we will always be this way, all silly and laughing and so much in love. He’ll comment on my laugh, an ancient in-joke and we’ll cackle when the children don’t, as they never will, understand just what’s so funny. And he’ll hold me, hold me at night, me delighting in the feel of his muscular thigh draped over my own, at his torso pressed up against my back, and the feel of his hot breath on my neck.


I wake with a jolt as I almost roll of the bed, and he (lying awake, watching me sleep, as it’s already morning), catches my arm, “Hey, careful you. What’s up?”. I, startled by the sudden lurch from dream to reality, look at my fiancé, aged nineteen years.


We have a long way to go yet.


I smile at him.


“Oh, nothing. Just a dream I had.”