Dream Dregs

It came to me in a burst of cold morning air, like a movie unfiltered on its screen like a memory untainted by its recollection. Only this movie was never made, and this memory never happened. The memory called me to the place (where snow rarely falls, where mutated deer run wild) of my family. I met them at the door to the strange House that seemed to struggle against invisible bonds. But they were not interested in me, (the story changes . . . and now the setting does too). A swampy wasteland with a frozen tundra just outside the city limits. I befriend an alligator, who learns of my betrayal (though I do not know how I came to betray; all I know is that it is not wise to betray an alligator) . . . and so I run, into the city where a stage is set, A restaurant like an epic theatre, or a huge abandoned mall with dream bathrooms like fortresses (where I hide) until I get called once again, to a race, to a flood, to a madman who is happy for some reason, and I fear his happiness, but I wake up then, holding a single gray strand of string. Is this what dreams are made of? These dregs of my dream slip away in my mind like the sands of time. But, in reality, they are the threads, the stitchings that must hold together our midnight delusions . . . or the comforts of our sheets.