a midsummer night's dream.

[levity]

The thing about dreams
is that they're not as perfect as we would like to think they are,
or as they would like us to think.
They fly. They fade. They laugh at us when we come back to the days when no one would dare to wear balloon dresses and flowers and emotions like jewelry
like items that should be prized and displayed and saved for special occasions just to show that you can match everyone else.

Because the simplest words and smallest actions or inactions
go straight to the heart
through and out and ready to strike again.

Is it any wonder people sleep at night?

-when velvet and moonlight drag out the most fantastical fantasies from the most absurd hiding places
and draw treasure maps to wherever secret hearts are buried
and keep no one any different from anyone else
in the impossibilities they find themselves believing?

And the lights and the pulse of sounds in the air
and the laughter and the dances and the spitfire retorts
and the shedding corsages and the old dredged-up sentiments and what could have happened instead
are too human for the night to be perfect the way no one believes it will not be

and not even the first star of that night can create miracles
or mold utopia out of a fairy tale that will be repeated not because it is any good but because it is the only way life will ever travel.

But in the end, that's all it all is.
And only a mess of hairpins and wilted flowers will tell the night's story
and even they will be swept away before they can be forgotten and remembered enough to be valued.

Just a dream.