It’s been a minute
     since I ran the projector.

Since I let the mind wander off-leash
  and paint the inside of my eyelids.

My brain has an editor
    with a shaky hand
     and a romantic budget.

It doesn’t do “linear.”

It does *cuts*—
         quick,
         clean,

         familiar as breath.

Smash cut:
      World Cup noise,
      a thousand flags in the air

      like confetti that learned geography.

The crowd roars,
    I’m not watching the pitch—
    I’m watching your face
    light up in that way
    that makes strangers

    feel like background characters.

And I swear
    the whole stadium
    inhales at once and exhales your name—
                                  quietly—
    like it’s the only chant that matters.

Hard cut:
     ATL Fish Market corner,
     two stools pretending they’re not ours.

Espresso martinis,
         dark and sharp,
         doing their fake-wake magic.

You take a sip like you’re icing the kicker.

I take a sip like I *am* the kicker.

We laugh at nothing,
    which is how I know it’s us.

Dissolve:
         woods.

Not the scary kind—
    the storybook kind,
    where the light falls in slats

    and every leaf looks intentional.

Coal is there, (of course)
     doing security with his whole chest,
     side-eyeing squirrels like they owe him rent.

You and I drink in the quiet,
    holding nature like a secret,
    letting the air do what it does

    when it isn’t crowded by schedules.

Jump cut:
     Irby’s barstools.

Same lean.
Same angle.
Same comfortable chaos.

Buckhead wildlife watching.

Talking about everything
             and nothing
        at the same time—

        perfectly fluent in the overlap.

A laugh from the left.

A story from the right.

Your knee brushes mine
     like punctuation.

Match cut:
      your smile → the rim of my glass.
      your voice → the hum of the room.
      your eyes  → the little neon “OPEN”

      in my head that never fully shuts off.

And then—
    the last cut is always the quiet one.

Sylvan.

The door clicks.

The city stays outside
    like it finally learned boundaries.

No stadium,
   woods,
   bar—

   just me,
        you,
        that soft,
        electric hush

   when the daydream
        stops being a screen
          and becomes a room.

We don’t name what happens next.

We just move closer,
   and the whole world edits itself down
   to one steady frame—

   the kind you don’t cut away from.

(…and for one second,
    everything holds.)

Then the lights go out,
         and the dream
         finishes the edit:

         turning familiar into real.