I found the note in the abandoned attic where my mother had spent her teenage years. Back then, when she was young, the place was full of life and color, pictures of radiant horses lining the walls and clothes strewn across the floor, a palace for a queen who died much too soon. Or so I’m told, I’ll never know, she took her tiara with her when she went. I’m in a haunted house now, the place my five year old cousins hide from when they visit for the holidays, where the suffocating darkness is only broken by the dim glow of ghosts and silence can only be broken by low wails, as the ghosts cry out for their lost queen. It is here that I find the letter, my only shred of evidence that I had a mother, that this was her room, and that somehow a part of her is inside of me. It is a letter, maybe her last before she disappeared, to the man she thought would raise me. This wild, insane idea of hers is almost hilarious, but not quite. I try not to let the laughter peel my scabs away, I don’t want the weakness in my blood to attract monsters far more sinister than ghosts that live in this forgotten palace, I’ve sworn not to become their prey. My father is an artist who is unable to live the life he paints, they are his dream, one that I have never seen. Or so I’m told, I’ll never know, he took his paintings with him when he went. I see the dream people in his paintings, I see their eyes, their hair, their lips, which bear no resemblance to me, mouthing the words of my mother as I read on. The letter is a story of love and dreams, or so their voices tell me, I’ll never know, the love and dreams have faded to ghosts in the darkness of this old palace, their bodies giving off a faint glow, the only source of light in this haunted house. My mother is an artist with her words. She speaks of dreams, beautiful white innocent dreams, bold pink dreams, rich selfish black dreams. But most important, she says through the lips of my father’s dream people, are dreams in the most brilliant shades of blue, the ones that survive in the sky and the ocean, the two most uncertain places. Yes Andres, she tells my father, and I can see the faces of his dream people begin to fade away with my mother’s final words, when every other turns dull and gray, blue dreams never die, they are the most precious of all, they are all we have to live by.

Over the years, I’ve found her final words to be almost ironic, both my parents have abandoned their blue dream. My mother is still out there, writing words she cannot live, or so I’m told, I do not read her stories, she took them with her when she went. I try not to be mad at my parents, though sometimes after I’ve written what comes before all else on my homework, essays and school records a million times, I think about whether my mother’s idea of a blue dream was a lie, a lot of beautiful, meaningless words thrown together that only my father’s dream people can speak. Maybe she thinks her blue dream will wait for her here forever, hidden in the darkness in the company of ghosts, deciphering the meaning of the name given to her by the mother she never knew. But she will not. She has graduated, left this place, and lives the words she writes, or so my mother will be told by people who are strangers to her, she might never know, Reve Azul took her name with her when she went.