Dream Journal Ultimate
Date: 10/11/2025
By amandalyle
It began, as these things often do, at a flea market. The air was thick with heat and chatter and the smell of old leather. I wanted to drift among the stalls — to finger chipped china cups and glittering costume jewellery, to let colour and chaos swallow me whole — but my husband had other priorities. He gripped my hand, tugging me through the tangle of bodies, our children trailing behind like dazed ducklings. Of course, he stopped at a food stall. He pressed his palms to the glass, his breath fogging it up. “Those look delicious,” he said, eyes fixed on a mound of raspberries collapsing in their own juice. “With a slice of cake, please?” The vendor assembled his strange order — soggy berries bleeding into sponge — and handed it over on a flimsy paper plate. My husband devoured it in seconds, joy radiating off him like steam. I chose ice cream. It felt like the safer bet. The crowd pressed closer. Sweat, elbows, laughter. I felt the walls of sound and movement tighten around me. Then I saw it — an alleyway, narrow and dark, humming faintly with promise. I tossed my ice cream into a bin and slipped away. In the shadow of the alley stood Ben Affleck, looking utterly lost. “You okay?” I asked. He straightened, polite as an English gentleman. “Would you be so kind as to show me around the town centre?” I nodded eagerly. This was Ben Affleck. Hollywood royalty. But as we walked, his charm soured. “This place is dreadful,” he muttered. “Where are all the shops? What a dump.” I recoiled. Sure, the place was somewhat of a ghost town, but where was his gratitude? Finally, we stumbled upon a single open shop — Claire’s Accessories, flickering florescent pink and desperation. Inside, a woman was fussing with a pram. Inside that pram lay a baby the size of a thumb. The poor thing kept sliding down into the folds of its footmuff, vanishing entirely. I couldn’t help myself — I reached in and pulled it back up again. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said. The mother didn’t look up. “Bought it off Temu,” she said, her voice flat. “Mind your own business.” The baby slipped again, swallowed by the fabric. I wanted to rescue it — pocket it like a rare gem — but something in the mother’s expression warned me not to. The world blinked. Now I was in a restaurant. Well, more of a greasy spoon. The sort that smells of oil and overcooked bacon. Across from me sat Jordan, a work colleague from Royal Mail. Only he wasn’t quite Jordan anymore. His usually immaculately trimmed beard now hung in grey tangles, his eyes sunken and bruised. He didn’t speak. Just stared through me as if I were made of smoke. I felt the waiter’s gaze prick at the back of my neck like a laser. “Would you like to order?” I asked him. A grunt. A shrug. Nothing more. I was about to leave when a waitress appeared with a tray. Sophie. My old school friend. Once elegant, now softened by time. She saw me see her and flinched, eyes darting away before she hurried back to the kitchen. The scene shifted again. Now I was in a classroom — primary colours and too-small chairs, the smell of crayons and waiting. I sat, fidgeting, the clock refusing to tick. In the corner, a woman was stabbing a knife through newspaper faces — calm, precise. Eyes first, then smiles, then silence. When she finished, she began cutting petals from the wreckage, gluing them to the wall until they bloomed into an impossible garden. “Wanna join?” she asked, without turning. I thought that she’d never ask. I leapt from the tiny chair, scissors in hand, and together we made beauty out of fragments — words, eyes, grief, colour. The wall became a living thing, breathing softly beneath our fingertips. And then I saw it clearly. All those moments — the market, the baby, the broken friends, the impatient husband — they were pieces of the same impulse: to hold things together. To stop them from slipping, from sinking, from spoiling. To rescue what can’t always be rescued. When I stepped back, the flowers on the wall seemed to move, petals rustling with breath. They weren’t perfect — torn, uneven, unfinished — but somehow, that made them real. Maybe that’s what the dream was trying to tell me: nothing stays whole, but we can still make art from the pieces.