Dream On

by Jennifer Hartmann

For the measured dreamers, professional dreamers, loyal dreamers, visionary dreamers, symbolic dreamers, lucid dreamers, and the daydreamers, you all have one thing in common: the audacity to pursue the impossible.

“Anyway, I know what it’s like to lose love. Sometimes by death, sometimes by choice. Either way, the hardest part is that the love still lingers, even after that person is gone. You can’t escape it. You have nowhere to put it. So you just let it fill you up with all these hopeless feelings and memories, and it weighs you down. And it hurts.”

“Dream on, Nicks.”

I love cold weather: hoodies, beanies, snuggly socks, and fireplace warmth. Give me snowflakes over summer sweat any day.

Our eyes meet for a stopped breath, and we hold, something passing between us, something that sneaks inside my soul and rots it from the inside out. I’ve lost her. No more piano chords to mend my restless heart. No more rooftops, hand-holding, or catnaps beneath her walnut tree. No more comfort. No more music. In this moment, it’s clear—she’ll never sing to me again.

I think, sometimes, love isn’t always in the ones who stick around. It’s in the missing pieces—the holes carved out, the gaps that strain and stretch. You notice when it leaves, the quiet, empty moments where absence lingers, and you feel the weight of what’s gone. It’s in the spaces where something used to be, in the silence that follows, in the ache that reminds you it was once there.

sometimes the dreams we give up make way for dreams we never knew we wanted.”

Death isn’t always tangible. Sometimes it’s a feeling, and sometimes it’s the absence of feeling. Sometimes it’s a weight added, and sometimes it’s a weight lifted. Mourning isn’t always funerals and headstones; sometimes it’s the silent realization that some things are better left to rest.

A smile touches my lips as I watch him across the golden acreage of our farm, our son Bowie giggling atop his shoulders as our basset hound lies lazily in a patch of sunbaked grass and our dairy cow munches blades out of the palm of my hand.