In Every Heartache A Dream

Many of my dreams are set in the place of my birth,
in the house I, uncomprehending, grew up in.

And in nearly every dream I find myself
repeatedly sifting the people I lived with,

who said they were my family, for the happiness
they said was theirs to pass on, and mine to keep.

I rarely found it. I did not know at the time

how individual unhappy families could be,

or how unhappiness passes itself off as individuality. 

Every overlay of my night time adventures

set in this imagined past woke me up feeling mildly frit,
fretting at words amiss, without knowing why,
about actions that seemed beyond comprehension.

In the end I kept a dream diary.
On waking up, I wrote my dream down

whilst the memory of my imagined actions was fresh.
Later I reflected, I remembered some recent occasion
where I recognize the actions in the dream.

But the distant location still drags me back 
to where I can now prove I never belonged.