why dreaming sucks

Snugly tucked in down, he toodles round the town. His dream is shining bright, full of green and sunlight. It's a canvas of a happy painter, with ducks on the shore of a crystal lake, laughing babies in perambulators, kites soaring on the breeze, and vast swaths of grass checkered by picnic blankets and wicker baskets. He sees himself on a bench, the only comfortable park bench he's ever sat in, and his arm around a certain girl. Her hair is golden in the sun, and she is his delight.

The paint begins to run, in drips and smears, racing pel-mel down the happy painter's canvas. Tucked snugly in, he begins to sweat; now he's hiding round the town from flying sinks like battleships in the sky. They're raining sludge in the crystal lake -- solid strings of sewage preserved like fossils in glass. Flooded baby perambulators are sticking in the mud and all the picnic blankets are stained dark and deserted, like a back alley chessboard champ kicked over in defeat. There is no breeze. His bench is empty. He runs with one arm out to his side, wrapped around his memory of her, like gauze around a mummy, of what his dreams were to be.