The Dream Catcher

She opened her eyes and wept. It hurt when she tried to shut out the light and see the remembrances come up against the backdrop of her eyelids. So in the late hours of the night, while the others slept, she studied the cracks in the ceiling above her. They weren’t bad memories. Oh, no. They were wishing wells of glory. They were the bluest lagoons in paradise. They were a child’s voice singing, Freedom. At least that’s how they seemed when she remembered her past life.

Her back hurt. It had been years since she slept in a real bed. The coldness underneath touched her bones. She didn’t care so much about that as she did the memories. The memories touched her mind, which always hurt more. Sometimes she didn’t believe that they were memories. These belong to someone else, she would think when videos of her family and friends would play in her consciousness. Eventually, she would fall asleep.

But she barely slept. A few hours if she was lucky. Luck wasn’t her forte. She had ended up in Prison, she had been looked down on as if she were lower than an animal. She had been stripped of everything she valued and loved. There was no going back to the life of comfort and dreams as she had once lived. Yet still, she never stopped dreaming.

She dreamt of skies bluer than her father’s eyes, of trees that were so tall and full that she had to lay down on the grass just to study them. She dreamt of how her toes would feel when she walked in the sand, of the sun and how warm it would be to simply sit beneath its rays. She dreamt about someone holding her hand, and who that someone would be. She dreamt of how nice it would be to eat a meal without a time limit, about how nice it would feel to hold a warm stone against her cheek. She dreamt of eating and eating, not because they made her but because she could. She dreamt about being good, instead of how bad they made her feel. She dreamt about her mothers face when she was free and still had the ability to make her smile.

Although she had given everything up and turned her back on mankind, there was one thing she would never give up…

She dreamt. No wall or officer could stop her from dreaming.

xoxox.

Lindsay