He could see
that she loved him;
no, more like Idol Worship.

'You' she said
'are the Man of my Dreams
my  Prince Charming.

Everything you touch
turns beautiful
including me.

I laid down my heart for you
hand pressed my soul for you,
danced round your Maypole
like a young girl in spring.
 
You populated my every dream;
you in my eyes-
could do no wrong or harm-
you were my dreams' dream.

He said:
I see now my dear
this was Dangerous Praise
and Deadly Love
at least for me.

I fell in Love's Dream, too,
but more with your
image of me,
not as I really was.

And so as not to disappoint you
I pretended to believe
the image of me
dancing in your eyes
but in doing so
I participated in
the subterfuge;
 
creating someone
who was only a facsimile
of the real me
and the real me
went into hiding
dreading to be discovered.

To you I was your hero-
the one to up-end
every wrong
and we
busily,
both of us,
constructed
white picket fences
in the blue, blue sky."

She:
'I believed you were my superman,
you said so too.'

He:
'I said so because you seemed
to need me to be that fantasy,

and I had no heart to disappoint
that precious dream
you had of me."

She:
'But you did disappoint because I began
to see
that you were not superman
or perfect even.

He:
'And that disappointment in your eyes
was too much for me.
Too much for me to bear.

In  time
my resentment came
because why should I
live to be another's dream
even the dream of the one I love?

And you too then in critical mode started to seem to me
were not perfection's dream;
you, too, in time
was revealed to me
to be merely a woman
a person, not perfect,
not a dream.'

She said:
"And there we stood
the both of us
pouring hurt and harm
onto each other as human beings
preferring  to cling to our perfect
dream scheme;

even as we came to understand
Misplaced Dreams are not dreams at all

but potential nightmares."

She looked at him,
with her deep, sad eyes
saying:

'Do you think you could love me
if my beauty fades
if my breasts succumb to gravity;
if other women to you
siren call?"
 
He said 'Could you still love me
if in morning light
my paunchy eyes
and thick waist
become pronounced
and lumpy high?"

So these two in fading light
allowed themselves
to contemplate
Irony's Twists
in the struggle between
what our dreams want
and who we really are;

so much at stake here
so little it takes
to merely
accept
that dreams are not real;
people are.

This is not to say
dreams must die.

Rather only dream
that dream
which constitutes Love’s Art
which comes with the words:

'I shall love you
til death do us part.'

That too
is a dream:
The one that True,
True Love
imparts.