One lump or two?

(october, when the air smells like old paper and unspoken dreams)

the clock struck nothing.

its hands hung like broken wings. the room was a throat holding its breath.

and somewhere above it all —

a light blinked open in the milk-white sky.

he wrote to me again.

the man in the moon.

in frost on glass, in condensation sighs, in the soft grammar of insomnia:

bring your best manners and your worst fears.

we are having tea.

i rose from sleep’s small coffin,

the bedsheets whispering secrets i once swore to keep.

my nightgown trailed dust from another century,

its hem stitched with missing stars.

and there — by the mirror — she waited:

my old imaginary friend,

eight years old forever,

hair tangled in candlelight.

“we’re late,” she said,

voice trembling like a teacup.

“he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

and with no door,

no sound,

no logic —

the world folded inward like a paper swan and

i was there.

a table made of nothing but remembering.

china cups bleeding moonlight.

chairs carved from bedtime stories.

and he —

the man in the moon —

pale as a wish left too long on the tongue.

“you came,” he said,

and the echo of it cracked in my chest.

“you invited me,” i answered.

(i thought my voice might shatter the porcelain air.)

“yes,” he said,

“but you always forget.”

the tea shimmered like mercury,

and every sip was a resurrection:

first, my childhood dog — brown, wagging, buried.

then, my mother’s lullaby — wet with absence.

then, a fever dream —

me sewing clouds into dresses,

me drowning in the wind that tried to love me.

the guests arrived one by one:

the doll with a stitched mouth,

the paper prince whose crown was obituaries,

the librarian who spoke in ash and riddles.

they bowed, they clapped, they breathed without lungs.

“tell us a story,” said the moon.

“the one you almost forgot.”

so i told them of the attic —

where dust fell like snowfall made of centuries,

and every mote contained a version of me,

smaller, purer, half-imagined.

how i used to stack books into staircases and climb toward the ceiling’s painted clouds.

how i once heard my imaginary friend crying,

because i’d left her behind in a chapter i never finished.

how i promised not to grow up —

how i broke it.

the doll’s eyes blinked.

the moon stirred his tea with a bone spoon.

“you left us,” he murmured,

and each word was a small funeral bell.

“why?”

“because —”

(i paused, searching for truth among ghosts)

“because growing up felt like dying slower.”

“ah,” said the moon, smiling without joy,

“you’ve learned the adult trick.”

time at the table spun sideways.

the cakes were bones.

the sugar cubes whirred.

the air tasted like lullabies that forgot their endings.

the moon’s reflection in my teacup wasn’t his —

it was mine,

younger,

feverish,

writing this very scene into the dark.

“you remember the dream?” he asked.

“which?”

“the one you buried.”

oh yes.

the dream where i was a bird with hands instead of wings,

flying anyway,

each feather bleeding ink.

i wrote my name across the sky

and he —

the moon —

read it like scripture.

he promised to visit.

he promised tea.

he promised forgiveness.

but he never came.

(until now?)

a quietude fell, thick as snow.

then the chandelier flickered out.

cups shattered.

stars spilled like spilled secrets.

the moon rose from his chair,

his face cracked open with light.

“it isn’t pretend,” he hissed.

“you made us.

everything made stays real somewhere.”

his tears were comets.

his voice — an ocean trying to fit itself into a shell.

“you think imagination dies,” he said,

“but it only hides until you dream loud enough.”

when i woke (if waking it was),

the night still smelled of lavender and forgetting.

beside me —

a saucer, cracked neatly in two.

one sugar cube, half-dissolved,

glittering faintly like an apology.

the moon outside hung too close,

like an eye that refused to blink.

and in the air, the faintest clink —

porcelain against porcelain —

a whisper:

“one lump or two?”

sometimes, when i can’t sleep,

i feel them all again.

the doll brushing dust from my lashes.

the dog curling at my feet, tail wagging in ghost-time.

the librarian humming from the rafters.

the paper prince kissing the rim of an empty cup.

and the moon, always watching.

his hands folded in his lap like prayers gone tired.

i tell him,

“i’m still here. i didn’t forget.”

the silence smiles.

the stars nod like conspirators.

because imagination isn’t illusion —

it’s a mirror that learned to breathe.

and every child who outgrew their ghosts

simply handed them to the dark for safekeeping.

somewhere, the tea party goes on.

the moon pours.

the guests laugh in rhyme and rhythm.

and the empty chair at the end of the table

waits.

waits for you.

for the version of you

that still believes in attic dust,

and frost-handwriting,

and dogs that dream,

and girls who drown in clouds

just to see what heaven feels like.

so if, tonight, the moon looks too human,

and the wind smells faintly of cake —

don’t close the window.

someone’s setting a place for you.

Written by w.l.

“one lump or two?” drifts between nursery rhyme and nightmare, reviving the ghost-logic of childhood imagination with the cadence of moonlit fever dreams.