Dream Dying Moment

That moment when a dream dies.

I do not always know the moment when a dream dies.  Sometimes they simply seem to disappear into the night, silently leaving the stage without taking a bow, dissolving into reality with scarcely a sigh.  But other times I know it completely.

It comes in a flash.  A comment.  A message.  A turn of phrase.  At each of this moments one can sense the turn in the road immediately after it has happened.  The door which you were hoping to go through suddenly shuts in your face, you see the off ramp which you thought you were going to take disappearing behind you in the rear view mirror.  Everything has changed in an instant.  The thing is simply not going forward as you had thought it would - in fact, more often than not the thing has completely stopped moving forward altogether.

I fight it, of course.  The keen sensation of completely having the dream die is so powerful in the moment that I simply try and turn my attention aside to something else.  I pretend the moment did not happen and that if I simply believe everything will go back to the way it was.  Or I instinctively know it and try to come up with even more heroic efforts to save the situation, even more extremes to go to to somehow make things right.  As if somehow any effort on my part is going to change something which is completely outside of my control.

But I am holding on to a wisp of moonlight, a thing of ash that flakes away in my hand even as I cling to it tighter and tighter.  No matter how much I try to freeze the moment or go back in time and undo the change it never works.  I am only left with that harsh realization of the moment when the dream died - and everyone knew it but me.