warm and in good spirits.

it is an interesting day when a dream is finally dead.
walking through the doors to a room that was once filled with aspirations and hope. you look down, and then you realize that it was misguided at best to begin with.
it played back for me on the drive home, the shadows shifting stringent outlines as i coasted through the neighborhoods. all of it, a mass of colors swirling through a cut room of memory's silent films. the pieces floating away in a slow motion mocked by "baby, boomerang."
(the first day was there, the fresh white paint of first day classrooms smeared by the green argyle stockings that first caught my attention.
there was that first walk, a fall painter's canvas as she hurried to step ahead of me while i attempted to talk her ear off. i was excited to simply have the slightest of her attention. i knew i didn't have all of it, but i was hopeful that i someday would.
there was the night she gave did. the night i was the only thing in the world that she wanted. the night i wouldn't let her think she had all of my thoughts and hopes.
then there were the affirmations we whispered. dreaming up houses with broad lawns and small dogs viewed from porch swings during the magic evenings of early summer.)
i tried to turn my thoughts to things more prevalent, hoping that by sliding this experience out of my head i would be able to not have it happen so soon. i tried to bargain with myself, pleading: "there is still a month left, play your cards right and you can see what happens. spend some more time in her new neighborhood next year and see if it all comes back. make it happen, or at least don't let it fade away."
i turned momentarily, and then continued.
(the other boys, the late night phone calls, and the lights being turned on as my mom came in and asked if i was okay. they were all present and accounted for, but they rushed by, inconsequential in the larger scheme. i loved her for everything she was, i took heart in the hard times because i knew that someday it will be better.
there was the night in a cold, barren, basement where it did all get better. i played the beast to her beauty and the screen flickered as we talked with the television on mute. i gave her a book of "post secrets" with one attached at the end.
i barely recall what i spent hours laboriously creating, but it did end up making her smile in the end.
there was the conversations filled with clever plans for star-crossed lovers. thoughtful considerations of baby names, of dog names, of living just to be poor and in love. neither of us ever really wanted that, we both just thought it would make a good story for a later, better off day.
i played through the dark times. the promises to write when i moved back south to attend another school. the letter from her that sat on my desk all semester, taunting me as it went unanswered. there were the deceitful phone calls as we would both dash for dormitory stair cases to conceal the beers being shot-gunned in the showers and the girls laughing along with the movies.
then there was the end of it. this would be the low point, the left for dead scenario that we all hope to someday conquer in our lives. no words of conclusion from either party left the divide more open. those first few days with no phone calls from her and no courage to dial in my fingers were the worst. then they all started to slide together. days built into weeks that constructed months. the summer hit and still no words to break the silence.
i thought of those dreams a lot then. the house, and the dog, and the porch swing i mean. i tried my damnedest to get away from them and put my life in opposition to them. and as i was watching it burn, it pulled me. it made me come back out for the little bit of hope that was barely enough to light the fire.
i started to construct a plan to make it relevant again. then i executed it.
i considered the day i saw her again. freshly showered and shaved in my finest shirt i walked the mall, sweating from the july heat. i saw her at the center. she smiled and we made small talk as hundreds walked by, too detached to notice the incredible circumstance that was coming to a head.
we strolled and discussed our new lovers and then she hurried off, promising that she was excited to spend more time with me when she arrived back in the fall.
then there was the fall, fights at soccer games and let down expectations were paired with constant conversation of the dreams we once had together. it cast a dreary light over the falling midwestern autumn sun.)
that was when i started to realize that the dreams were dying. there is no hope left in verbal hallucinations that do not yield any limitation to reality. it started to become a drug, something we could use to get by at the end of the day to calm our nerves and liven the conversation. it was something we could agree on, and it was nothing more than a dream.
(finally, it cut to the desperate acts of a deranged pair of addicts. we started spending all of our time together in an upstairs apartment, watching cable television, holding a rented baby a couple evenings a week. at first, the thrill was incredible, and then it became everything.
the talks of dreams stopped. this was the present, and it was good enough to get by on. however, it would never be good enough to sustain.)
that's when i knew. last night, as i climbed those creaking stairs, i could feel the density in the air as i turned the corner and inhaled. it flickered on the windows alongside the latest mtv flavor of the month program. even when she handed me the small child, sleeping, and she settled into my chest, i could hear it in her breath.
the dreams are all dead.
perhaps they have vanished, haunting some other fortunate pair of young, uninnocent kids far away from these upper midwestern plains.
last night however, a blind man could have felt the emptiness of the glass jar that once held them. no houses, no dogs, no porch swings. just a couple of grown up kids who never wanted to make it on their own striving out into a colder world then they have known without the dreams of each other to keep them warm and in good spirits.