I followed my dreams. I chased them. I watched them from a distance, I let them know I was getting closer. I was always getting closer. I wanted to capture them, define them, defile my own life that they might gain significance. I sacrificed my dignity. I begged the stars, wept, and pined.
And now, I see my dreams were merely reflections of a fictional life. I made the mistake of thinking was something other than ephemeral and incomplete, a closed circuit. I am a phenotype for my own soul, a propensity approaching verisimilitude, a faded simulation, a collapsing wave function, a purple bee, the breeze in an anecdote, a pile of Herzog laundry, emptiness.

And emptiness scares my dreams. I refuse to admit they were never mine. I speak their names into the bolus of a small candle flame, eventually extinguishing the light. I am in darkness, and the waxy smell is all up in my nostrils. Trying to walk steady, but I got sea legs.