Dormant daydreams always seem to end in spits of light. And that’s what she was, a dormant dreamer; one of those new age hippies with the old age cleanse who preferred sleep to smarts, but was still smart enough to know what things were better left asleep. Like the red and blue that filled the rooms like all-knowing eyes, hollering out into the night their warnings knowing all too well that it was too late. The bad things, all of them, were meant to be tucked away under that old bed spread she had since she was six, sweating in the fresh heat propelled by the broken window fan, and watched intensely by the ancient wall garden that sprouted flowers along with eyes. Eyes of friends and family that had grown up right beside her, only to be so far away now; unable to recognize her new face. In a split second her dreams gushed out all around her, covered in the tire tracks of lost time as it plowed down another. A flash flooded intersection between streets that would never know her name. Nurtured by fairytales bred from capitalist mold, she, like so many others, was raised to believe that dreamers, and their sugar laced dreams never die. But looking at them now with her new face – the one covered in tar, tracks, and regret – she could barely recognize them herself. Yet there they were; her dreams caught in rivers of red, brought down by a wheel controlled by vodka hands.

Even the stars fizzle out and fall from the grace of their temperamental constellation. No one ever cries for the stars. No one ever sobs for the sake of the sky. No one’s ever surprised by the fall of a star. So why are we so shocked when we fall too?

Walking through the door she was made to look like a patriot; body painted red, lips blue, and eyes glazed over with white headlight fires still burning fresh out there somewhere. The revolution between morals and metal came faster than she went, and she, a lowly soldier, was left to sit on the wooden floors of a house compiled with wreckage. She sat there for hours, waiting, watching, all the while not truly knowing. With each blink electricity whizzed through her chest as distant as a passing breeze; just another thing she couldn’t feel anymore. Then things started waking up – things long forgotten and mentally evicted seeped from the moldings, and furnishings, and patterns that no one ever liked to begin with. Emotions, those monstrous little things, emerged from the dust where she had been taught they belonged. Then came the red and blue, whispering out to them in the night that it was time to wake up. Then came the men, the ones who caught those fizzled stars and pinned them to their chest as proof, woke up the people those emotions were just itching to sink their teeth into. Distance is a draught, and reality is a plague. Together they brought the whole house down.

To her right stood Mother, crying with contempt. Anger shook her, shock slapped her silly, and her nature made her speechless. Pain doesn’t use words, and for this one unspeakable moment, neither could she.

To the left stood Father, alone in the family room without the family. An old man who suddenly looked old. With one withered hand pressed hard against his cracked lips, he was just one of the many corpses she would get to meet.

But where, oh where was Brother? Brother was away. Dissolved into the fumes, he giggled and snorted away all of his prospects and promise. Would he be like Mother? Would he shed a tear? Or would he be like Father? Stoic, a fragile mess collected into one coffin. Or would he be like Brother and never give a damn.

Those who dare to dream shall take those dares to their deathbed. For death and dreams are liquid gold more valuable than the crowns of kings and queens.

She once wished that she could dream forever. Now forever was nothing but a dream.