I sit in the car showroom.
He smiles at me like I’m the next big sale.
But his dream is the beach.
Not my tan, not my shorts, not my sun.
The beach. To forget who he became.
I sit with the broker.
He says “inflation” like it’s a threat.
But his dream is a mortgage.
Not my debt, not my box on the 12th floor.
He wants walls. A castle. A cage with heating.
I sit with the coach.
She tells me I should want more.
But her dream is the body.
Abs, hunger, filtered mirrors.
She calls it confidence. I call it a mirror trap.
I sit with the doctor.
He prescribes “rest.”
But his dream is dinner.
Silence. No questions. Just chewing.
He heals others because he can’t swallow himself.
I sit with the clerk.
He stamps paper like it’s a blessing.
But his dream is the chair.
Armrests. A flag behind him.
He sits on people like cushions.
Everyone holds a dream like a dead butterfly in a box.
They stare at it. Feed it. Beg it to fly.
It’s dead.
Then the corporations come.
They wrap the beach in lifestyle.
They paint mortgages as stability.
They filter the body into wellness.
They stage dinner as balance.
They market the chair as success. Delivered.
Then the ideologies arrive.
They guard dreams like relics.
They take this junk and chant it like gospel:
The beach becomes freedom.
The mortgage becomes duty.
The body becomes discipline.
The dinner becomes tradition.
The chair becomes the nation.
And then regimes march in.
They polish these dreams to a military shine.
Democrats uplift the beach as equality.
Liberals sanctify the mortgage as opportunity.
Communists roast dinner on party lines.
Fascists sculpt the body into armor.
Dream is not revelation.
Dream is glitch.
Dream is an old PowerPoint about the meaning of life —
that only runs on Windows XP and crashes if you touch it.
Dream hides behind the word possible.
It glows in ads, dims in eyes.
It shines — but that’s not light. It’s grease.
Take the word away.
What’s left is always the same:
Eat.
Sleep.
Love.
Escape.
This is not transcendence.
Not eternity.
This is anesthesia.
Dream doesn’t unlock the cage.
Dream makes the cage comfortable.
A little golden plaque on the bars:
“Hope lives here.”