I really want to get a puppy. Yes, still.

A few nights ago I had a dream that I lived in a house with four stories and the top floor was a lofted nursery where I was caring for a baby bunny.  I adored my dream-bunny.  I loved him so much that the love formed a slippery bubble of emotion in the back of my throat that made it a little difficult to speak clearly or swallow.

So I’m in the dream-nursery and I’m taking care of the dream-bunny, feeding it sips of milk from a spoon with a long handle, dabbing dribbles from its chin.  Friends visit and I’m nervous to let anybody else hold my dream-bunny.  I let them but I say “Be gentle, he’s very delicate,” and I pretend not to hover over their shoulders, where I can look down at his dream-bunny face, until I can’t stand it anymore and say, “Oooookay, that’s enough” and gather his warm, wriggling dream-bunny body out of their arms. 

Next thing I know, my dream-bunny is a dream-flea.  He lives in a petri dish in the nursery.  I can’t hold him and it’s not easy to feed him with a spoon, though that doesn’t stop me from trying.  My dream-flea is not warm or wriggling but I love him so much that I stay up all night with him because he’s sick.  He needs his dream-flea medicine every few hours.  I try to administer it with the long-handled spoon. 

My dream-flea is so small that I have to drop dye into his shiny little dish so I know where to look when I want to look at him.  He swallows the dye and it turns his little body bright green, but when I point my dream-flea out to visitors, nobody is interested.  “What am I looking at?  Oh, that?  Okay, well, let’s go see a movie.”

I don’t want to go see a movie because my dream-flea will need another dose of medicine soon, but I agree to sit in the kitchen downstairs and drink coffee with one friend while another volunteers to sit with my cherished pet.  The nursery loft looks down over the rest of the house, so when my volunteer nurse leans over the railing and says, “Emily, you’d better come up here,” I look up three stories and I know I won’t make it upstairs in time to say goodbye to my little dream-flea. 

Even though I knew that the situation was almost hopeless, my ailing dream-flea hardly stood a chance, I was fighting an uphill battle and wanting so badly to save his life just wasn’t enough to save his life, my dream-heart was broken. 

When I woke up, I could still feel the slippery bubble of love and devotion and adoration that had formed in my throat.  I could still feel the desperate hope that I’d be able to save my dream-flea’s life like pulled muscles in my arms.  It never goes easy on you, love.