brightly coloured boxes

I put my dreams in boxes so I can hide them from the world.

Sometimes though, I forget where I put the boxes.

I search for a while, trying to remember where they could be and how I could find them but eventually, I stop looking.

After a while, when I've put new dreams into new boxes, I've forgotten about the first set of boxes.

I can't tell anyone about the dreams in the boxes; I can't ask if anybody else remembers where I put them, because the whole point of the boxes was to hide the dreams from them.

This madness goes on, with most boxes going entirely un-remembered.

Occasionally though, I stumble across one of these boxes as I go about my daily business.

Sometimes they make me smile. Sometimes they make me cry, because now they're not dreams in boxes: now they are just memories of dreams and of things that could have been.

I don't think I have regrets, but every now and then I think I shouldn't box those dreams up right away, perhaps I shouldn't hide them, especially if I'm going to be careless and lose them.

But I just keep right on boxing.