Dream Journal
September 4th, 2026. 6:32 AM. I had a dream.
Now; that’s not an unusual occurrence for me. I have always dreamed. Nightly, in my sleep - and during the day, when I’m awake. But this one? I woke from fragmented slumber and understood that a part of me was being softly laid to rest. It’s no epic dragon battle on another world where some evenings have taken me, but rather a simpler figment closer to the heart.
We begin in the most familiar environment I know of: Home. It's not an out-of-the-ordinary stage setting, right? I feel it's common that people dream about their houses. Home is an intimate, personal environment where the roots of life take their hold. I have certainly wandered in realms that don’t exist in reality more than once before, but, for tonight's dream, I know this place's existence all too well.
Sometimes, my dwelling looks like it did when I was 12. A stripped to the bone mobile home, scarcely held together by slightly rotted beams and boards from half-completed renovation projects. 90’s style diamond shaped emerald and white glazed tiles that've begun to peel littered the kitchen floor. The most hideous pea-soup green carpet that left your clothes stained in the scent of mildew if you sat on it for too long graced our living room.
Other times, it’s the same likeness of present day. Quieter, greyed. Half complete. A waft of slightly burnt eggs and vanilla candlewax coat the air in a dizzying olfactory haze. Traces of lives lived in these packed quarters tangled themselves in the spider’s cobs. Very rarely, home reveals itself to me as the future. An apartment of my own in a distant city, with windows large enough to drench every corner in the sun's radiance - standing tall beside the clouds rather than looking up at them.
Occasionally, there's a convergence of past and present. The walls will shift between timelines as easily as light cascades between the shadows of dancing leaves. I have been digested and spat out in the hearth of this beast many times. I've both wilted and bloomed between paper thin particle board ribs, and liquified until fully dissolved into the polyester fibers of my bedsheets. My pulse has transferred into dangerously old electrical wiring while my synapses became a symbiotic network of mycelium with the black mold spores. If you looked too closely, you'd notice my bedroom secretes laughter and secrets. Music hums beneath the floorboards like a tempered heartbeat. Memories ooze like oiled mucilage through open fissures in the ceiling, and sludge down into the gullet of my subconscious.
Over the years, I’ve come to an observational conclusion. In my dream world, home is a physical metaphor for me. The framework itself is my body, while the rooms are what's within my mind. My bedroom equates to the subconscious mind. Most often, I find myself climbing back into my own bed before I wake up - after the end of a long dream.
My grandmother's room is an ancestral place that transforms when my family undergoes collective growth periods. The appearance of converging timelines suggest separate existing versions of self meeting once again. The bathroom is a place of release. (Or, I have to actually use the bathroom while I'm asleep.)
For this dream, it was a convergence. My family and I had decided to rummage through bags of forgotten childhood riches tucked in a space above our porch. We referred to it as an “attic.” But it’s not really an attic, just a space large enough to fill with material memories. In some sense, it makes me wonder how differently we’d treat time if its passage wasn’t strained like tea leaves through the sieve of a human mind. Then again, steeping tea for too long can tend to make it bitter. I guess it depends on your taste.
I admire deeply sentimental people for this reason. Your brains are a treasure trove of camera rolls dipped in rose gold. Every detail of loving gestures and touching experiences
are hung as paintings in a gallery of mirrors, reflecting the past like dazzling Christmas lights on fresh snow.
I think those who are kindred in that description would have appreciated this kind of dream. For me, much like the attic - memories are tucked away in a dark space I cannot reach, even if they're made from the finest gemstones and metals. I endured much fragmentation of those aspects of myself.
Inside of the bags, were artworks. Pages from kindergarten to grade 5 left unkemptly tucked in the crinkled plastic as if they’d be visited again soon. Scrawls of marker colors bled into a septic rainbow of molding paper and obscure symbols that once represented a memory I can no longer reach. Stray Bella Sara cards, tattered and torn by the hands on the clock were stuck to some sheets. Fondly remembered, no less - with their beautiful equestrian illustrations that I both idolized and envied for conceptual beauty. Not to mention the talent those artists had. The music in the commercials for Bella Sara brings a wave of magic over me each time I revel the melody in my head.
Keeping the drawings company; were a plethora of once loved toys and stuffed animals, stored away with their imaginary hearts. All those years spent in muffled darkness - only to find an older, saddened self staring back at them with spark half emptied eyes and a once playful spirit lost in the atmosphere of life.
One of these plushes - had been a pastel lavender Shining Star’s Pegasus. Shimmery silver wings, white feathered hooves and a matching mane. The most specific quality of this plush is the star symbol that resides on the bottom of one hoof. Every Shining Star has it.
What’s funny about this part of the dream - is that I have no waking memory of this stuffed animal.
My younger sibling owns the teddy bear version of one. He is thee stuffed bear. Yes, just like in the movies where youth are depicted with a favored doll. He’s remained at her side into her early adult life, and all across the world. He’ll forever be a sacred guardian over her sleep domain. I still vaguely remember when we went to Toys-R-Us and she picked him out.
What’s special about these stuffed animals is, the company who made them was partnered with the international star registry. You could register your plush with its unique code and have your very own Star named in space. They don’t make cool toys or websites like this anymore nowadays.
I myself never had one. Not from what I can remember, anyways. I did have many shades of purple magical plush horses. But I hadn’t consciously thought about these stuffed animals in a very long time. I may have seen their mention in passing from late night scrolling which could logically explain the circumstances - but what got to me was this Pegasus.
It doesn’t immediately appear in google searches. I didn’t think a Pegasus version existed. The moment reality returned to my corneas, I scrambled for my phone only to find that it is real. Not only was it real - but it was near identical to the one I dreamt about; and it’s quite rare.
I wasn’t certain what to make of this part of the dream. So I left it up to my imagination, as a whimsical moment in life.
That’s not where the dream ends, though.
During the discovery of this beautiful fabric jewel - something had quietly wandered in from the short corridor of our porch. The door had been closed, so I'm not certain where the tiny creature emerged from. Pencil thin legs struggled to carry the remaining weight of an already lithe form.
As the tiny being wobbled across the laminated wood vinyl, a snot dribbling black button nose flared desperately for oxygen. A pair of struggling lungs were audibly borrowing the surrounding air from beneath soft brown velvet fur. The imprint of an all-too-visible ribcage stretched and expanded the spotted white patches that blanketed the fawn's pelt like a dusting of powdered sugar. Large brown eyes with the inner corners crystallized in caked-on crust - depicted a shadow that only melancholy promises. The same kind my stuffed animals witnessed in mine.
The poor animal was tinted in a sallowed greenish hue. I want you to imagine old cartoons on the television; the color they would turn while ill. This was suggesting a sickness of some kind, if the present symptoms hadn't already announced this tragedy enough.