40- Vanilla

I dream.

For the first time, I'm not inside the lighthouse where it's dark and my heart is racing a thousand miles per hour or I'm scared because Mommy could want to play one of her games and I won't win. I never win.

It's outside. I'm outside. On the shore next to the sea. I can hear the waves crashing and I can tell I'm me but not me. My body is on the sand, it's warm and the air smells nice.

There's an umbrella over my head and Dad's next to me, trying to make a seashell necklace. Staring at him now, through my eyes after so manu years, I realize I'd almost forgotten what he looked like.

He was blond like me and yet not quite. His hair looked like golden silk, the type that makes you wonder if the sun decided to try it's luck with another creature that wasn't Rapunzel and also about gold chains and wristwatches and other shiny things.

And he has green eyes, too.

Emerald green eyes that I'd wondered why I never had. There was nothing remarkably similar about Dad and I, except