My eyes shoot open. I notice hot sweat dripping down my arms and forehead as I climb out of bed. I struggle to remember the dream.

“Dear journal,” I write, “my dream this morning was about poison. I was resting on my couch… and it was in my coffee cup. I drank it and went unconscious.” My writing style is nonchalant- I am actually scared out of my wits.

In that moment before I woke up, I saw the face of the man who poisoned me. Who it was, I could not remember. He made my coffee.

I step into my slippers and cautiously tiptoe down the stairs. My husband greets me with a smile. “More nightmares?”

He doesn’t understand. They’re not just nightmares. They actually happen. I can feel it. I sit down on the couch and curl into a ball.

My husband rests the coffee cup he made me on the table. I look into his face and get a weird sense of déjà vu. I’ve seen his face millions of times. But I get the weird feeling that I saw him very recently.

I rise the coffee to my face and breathe in to smell the bitterness that wakes me up in the morning.

Cinnamon.

I smell cinnamon.

I smelled cinnamon in the dream. I don’t like cinnamon in my coffee. I especially don’t like it when I think it is covering for something.

“I think it might be too hot, can you try a sip for me?” I ask.

He looked anxious. “Uhm- just wait a little while for it to cool down.”

“I don’t want it to get too cold.”

“I- I don’t like coffee anymore.”

I decide to confront him. “You poisoned my coffee.”

“What? You’re just being paranoid.”

I didn’t like this at all. “Prove it.”

He slowly took the cup from my hand. Too slowly for my liking. He rose it to his lips.

The sound of the coffee cup breaking broke my heart. My husband dropped the coffee cup and fled through the door.

My eyes shoot open for the second time. The dark room was a slight comfort from my hyper realistic dream.

When I went to my psychologist in the afternoon, she told me there’s nothing to worry about.

I don’t believe her. I don’t believe her one bit.