Dreamer

Emma Moran

confession: somedays i cannot tell the difference between a dream and a memory. 

they blend together, day bleeding into night, night burning into day, repeat, repeat, repeat; 

like songs on the radio you know but just can’t remember the name of, like paint left to drip from one canvas onto another, like sentences of a book you’ve read for too long.

i dream in daylight; 

when i wake i hold my dreams in my hands, shake them, hold them out to the sun and try to guess if it’s a memory or a mimicry made in the dead of night. 

how far back can i reach and believe; 

when you look at your childhood are you remembering or dreaming? 

i drown myself in deja vu, displaced, haunting my own conservations like a ghost, question on my lips, ‘sorry, but has this happened before?’; 

what do you believe when you can’t trust your memory, when you can’t trust yourself, when nothing seems solid, when you reach out to hold their hand and they turn to mist in your fingers?

i sit with my collection of half truths and false memories, and pluck them away, like the petals of a flowers: 

i wake up, i wake up not, i wake up, i wake up not, i wake up, i wake up not.