Sogni d'oro

The fog is beautiful this morning.
Venice is still sleeping, blanketed by a thick mist that conceals the tops of picturesque old churches. I stand on the slow waterbus and shiver; I am still sleeping too.
I had a bad dream last night. One that felt so real it seems as though I got no sleep at all. Maybe I wasn’t dreaming, maybe I was living another life in a parallel universe. Maybe that’s why I got no sleep. It was a dream that stayed in my mind once I got out of bed and followed me through my slow morning routine. Now the dream is stitched into my clothes and tangled in my hair. By the end of the day it will wash away with my hot evening shower, but for now I can’t get it off my mind.
It was a bad dream because it was so good. The dream was what I want, what I wish could be reality. The dream was only bad because it was only a dream. I don’t want to let go, don’t want it to fade away. My dream will drift into the Venetian fog and add to the clouds that are covering the tops of picturesque old churches.
Because though I am living in Venice and though I am lucky and happy to be here we dream because sometimes fiction is better than reality. We dream because sometimes there is somewhere else that we would rather be or something else we would rather be doing.
We can’t help it; dreams are wishes we make in our sleep.