My dream used to live in me, and I used to live in it too.

“I want to be a writer when I grow up, so I could write stories with happy endings.”  

In those years of ought innocence and fake naps on idle Mondays, it has become an indispensable question every adult faked their curiosity over. It was one thing I would brag about as if it was the glue to every puzzle piece of my future; in my age of cradled impulses, loneliness, and wayward bearing, it was that idea I long for; and with sand through an hourglass, it unknowingly became that idea of ambivalence—what I wanted most to fulfill but the same thing that greatly consumed me.

I have forsaken the idea of my big dreams long enough to impel its vanishing into thin air. Yet to every big dream that goes away, comes a chance to see the little things beyond.

As I try to trace the marks left off of my far-reaching desire, I figured out what these little dreams were. It was no longer as big as about what I wanted to become, but an ache to fulfill at least five hours of sleep; the desire to spend weekends with my family; my longing to sit in silence and be able to do nothing; the wishes of carrying through the tiniest bit of exhausting function in the wee hours.

My dream, now buried in the grave of my past, at the end of placing you in the casket of my half-meant grief; for I do not mourn your passing. Rather, I celebrate your presence in those little hopes I often overlook—in forms of hardly passed quizzes, naps on weary days, or even the tiniest fulfillment I could feel. 

Had it not been for the thought of pulling through the smallest battles you come with, I will never get the chance to see those little miracles that make their way to meet you in time; in a different place, with my new hope in life.

My beloved dream, I will see you again—one small dream at a time.  

-Florence Anne Taiño

(Photo by Janice Aina Herrera/FEU Advocate)