A Dream

Been a long time since I finished a poem, let's see if I've lost my touch completely @frasermurraypoetry on instagram if you'd like to hear my readings.

I had a dream once
She was beautiful
All lilypad eyes and half-moon smiles,
Cheeks just rosy enough that you could see the love straining to escape her perfect skin and gift itself onto the world
But never onto me
I had a dream once
She was cruel
All half-baked lies and self-serving guile,
She was the taste of blood in shark-infested waters
Or maybe just the fear that follows
But still I chose to swim
I had a dream once
She was kind
Laid her gentle presence on my mind
Read my face when words would fail, translated truth between the lines,
But nothing more, she was never mine
I had a dream once
Brief and fleeting
Another world and another meeting
Where I was different, better, even enough to capture that affection and turn it into love
But dreams can't always come true
Which is why they remain as dreams;
Every winner requires a loser, every victory, a defeat,
Every hint of hope drowned out when I remember that I am me,
So I recede,
And will do so endlessly,
Stabbing desperate in the dark because it hurts for me to see
The sorry state that I've descended to while chasing stupid dreams,
These days it seems, the beer almost drinks itself;
I may be wiser than I was, but just enough to blame myself,
For every chance that I avoided, every time I ran away,
For every soul who I abandoned while they begged for me to stay,
Because my mind was so entangled in it's mission to escape,
I had a dream once
But now it's gone
Crushed flat beneath the wreckage of the person I once was
The crenellated walls around my psyche seemed so tall
But now they strike me as they fall and amplify the leering call of non-belief,
If I can't conquer this and turn over a new leaf
Then what's the point in spending life submerged in self-consuming grief?
I had a dream once
But I was scared
And I watched it slowly shift to a perpetual nightmare,
So even sleep is no salvation, it only makes me more aware
Of all the things I used to feel, things that are no longer there.