dreams
July 5, 2021
Edited January 18, 2023
Lying in bed at night unable to sleep
Is one of the most stressful forms of doing absolutely nothing.
Trying different positions,
Rolling over to wrap tighter in the blanket
Only to realize how foolishly hot it gets,
Flipping off the covers once again
To feel the relief of air so cool it almost brings sleep.
But then becoming acutely aware of the gradual descent betrays such rest.
Tonight, I opened my eyes to the frustrating glare of a streetlight
That sliced through my window’s defenseless barrier.
Submerged in this unwelcome brightness of my dark room,
I learned to dream
Without slipping into unconsciousness.
I dreamt of Sisyphus shattering his rock,
Revealing just how feeble deity power was.
I dreamt of walls we could put our hands through
And retractable tails we could wear.
I dreamt of a world where people typed with their toes instead of fingers,
The finest of motor control present in the most useless body part.
I dreamt
Because I believed in indulging the subconscious mind,
The same way Epicurus indulged in pleasure,
Convinced that there was nothing we owed,
Now or after death.
My friend Martin used to dream of his exams before taking them,
An indescribable evil taking form in ten cruel pages,
An uncomfortable rehearsal before tomorrow’s reality
That no amount of Melatonin or late nights could avert.
Did fiction scare him,
Or truth?
Immigrants still dream in education and bootstraps,
Not realizing there are tiers to the American Dream.
How suffocating it must be,
To be trapped in an eternal cycle of deferred aspirations and generational reimbursement.
And yet we continue to dream
Because hope is the thing with feathers,
At least to those that don’t ascribe to nihilism.
I would believe in Dickinson’s metaphor
Except that her bird stole my most valued possession,
My pride.
People perceive dreams to span hours, even days,
When in reality it’s a 10-minute ordeal.
I wish I had the power to stretch and collapse time
The way my subconscious does.
But lying here at night,
Locked out of the dream world,
Darkness dissolving into dawn,
I could only controlled my night visions
With my eyes wide open.