Have you seen Anne Hathaway sing “I Dreamed a Dream?” There was a time 
Her character, Fantine, can no longer restrain her self-pity and grief and breaks 

into song. Her words don’t build plot, they generalize, strip tragedy of detail: 
she is young and unafraid. Then her hope is torn apart. She finds a lover to 
assuage it, but the lover leaves, and now

life has killed the dream I dreamed. Story of nostalgia, of woe, universal across 
time, race, class. So common as to be 

our story. There was a time, a general biography, a collective melancholy, a we 
as we break into

Dream. There was a time
When everyone liked us
When our jokes went over
Well into the afternoon and evening
A piano vamp of fairness
It was a song we dreamed
It would stay that way
Love would never die, God would be forgiving
A high note sustained
Opening bars to bridge to final refrain 

Change came 
In the form of bills and regrets. Our dreams 
Still dreams and we quit easily
After an early disappointment. The crowd
Humoring us. Had they ruined our plans 
Or were we the cause of our quiet humiliation? Was the hope 
Torn apart or was it a gradual letting go? In evening light
We looked for someone, more like a song, to notice our talents, 
And we all found one
Stood in the sad eyes of that one
Singing a summer
Of endless wonder 
There was a time
Until the morning 

The bed was empty. Will the one come back, be a ballad by the stove 
And ask us to please set the table? Live the years together?
Come back to solve things so we can stop dreaming at walls? 
We say something like there are storms we cannot weather. We listen to a song. 
We thought it would be different. It would be a dream.