…quixotic madness

I dreamed of you again last night
not as you are, but as the version I imagined
when I still believed in hope
in the dream, you turned towards me
as though you wanted to be close
you stood patient, almost translucent
while I in my mind, I rehearsed a thousand ways
to get closer to you, without shattering the spell
I have always been naive in this way
taking glimmers of interest for promises
I was warned over and over
about loving someone who wouldn’t love me back
I know that I should not charge, headlong into illusion
into this impractical, quixotic madness
with a cracked shield and a borrowed sword
but I have never been good at restraint
I see you, and the world rearranges itself
and I am suddenly tilting at windmills again
I tell myself this time will be different
that devotion alone might alter the ending
that longing, when refined to purity
can rewrite the narrative of love
in my mind I fight for you in silence
I defend your absence, as if it were sacred
I make excuses for the distance between us
for the careful way, you never cross the line
that would undo me completely
and still I dream, oh how I dream
I imagine a moment in time
where reality looks away, for just a moment
and we exist unchallenged in this imagined world
where your hand is in mine and nothing collapses
under the weight of the awful truth
but morning arrives and the sun exposes
the fragile scaffolding of my hope
even knowing this, I whisper your name like a vow
and I step back onto the field where impossible love
has already defeated me, a hundred times before
©Ann Bagnall