The Songs You Forget When You Wake Up

I have gone back to sleep, looking for the dream I left behind. There was a wall rising into a faded sky while the trees looked on. . .

Asleep, I live in the sweet poeticism that I can only brush with my fingertips while awake. My brain fills with the vista of someone’s imagination, a canyon that opens up to a navy sky full of constellations I’ll never know. A girl, long beyond weeping, turns her back to a thoughtless group, her task both abhorrent and necessary. . .

Even the nightmares are grand and complicated, as I am chased through a glass house that tilts from its uneasy perch on a mountain-spire. The land below is quilted green and orange and I could walk on the sky if I turned the right way. . .

It is a cruel and delicate cobweb. I cling to the few images that remain, but my desperate clutch pokes holes and dents their corners until only shreds are left, stained with my conscious thoughts. Tied hands . . . a tattered ghost. . . a bottle labeled with an ever-shifting name. . .

And water, always water.

I am grateful that I have enough glory in me to assemble my dreams, but oh! It aches when they slip away and I am left staring at the same white ceiling, huddled under the same plaid blanket, living the life that is unable to be as amazing as they told me when I was a child. I want—I want—

I don’t know what I want. I’ve never dreamt of it.