Which Side Am I On?

Nights like this, when the sky is starry black and moonlight blue, and winter isn't finished dying and spring isn't finished being born, it's so hard to not think of every stupid thing you've ever done wrong in your whole life. The full moon floating like an icy ghost is the last full moon of winter. The stars that glowed on Christmas Eve are sunk down near the western horizon now, fading like solstice memories. And the spring constellations are still somewhere below the eastern horizon, waiting for the equinox. And everywhere I look I see regret.

I've been having serial dreams for a while now, at least since last fall. My life is so different in those dreams, so much happier. In the dreams I'm married to a beautiful Spanish girl and we have an eleven year old daughter. I work at some job that has to do with taking care of rescued animals and we have a very obese cat who always wears a sweatshirt. She sleeps in a cat bed with the litter of  baby squirrels we rescued, whom she's raising as her own. My daughter sings them lullabyes in Spanish to help them sleep. It's almost always a holiday weekend, either Christmas or Fourth Of July, and we're always going to a party.

The longer the dreams go on, the more I find myself hoping that they are my real life and this is the dream, where I sit in the dark writing by the light of the computer monitor. This morning I woke up around sunrise, at the end of a really sweet dream about my daughter's birthday party, and I almost cried when I realized I was here again. Then I remembered my daughter kissing me goodnight in the dream and thanking me for the party and telling me she'd see me in the morning. I guess morning there is night here, so good night.