The piece feels like someone drifting through a dream that knows too much about their fears, a place where the mind refuses to rest even when the body begs for it.
The recurring keyhole becomes a wound an opening you never asked for, always watching, always returning.
The girl who stays just out of reach feels like a longing the heart keeps chasing even when it knows it can’t hold her.
Every shift in the dream alleys, fields, cities mirrors the emotional chaos of wanting someone who keeps slipping away.
The paralysis captures that helplessness perfectly: the body frozen while the heart runs itself raw.
Her humming becomes the only thread of comfort, a fragile sound that feels like hope and loss at the same time.
The eye behind the keyhole is the most human terror the sense that something sees you when you can’t see yourself.
The blink that ends the dream feels like mercy and abandonment in the same breath.
Waking up sweating and crying carries the weight of a grief you can’t name, only feel.
In the end, the exhaustion of the day ahead becomes its own quiet confession: some dreams don’t end when you wake; they follow you into the light.
I am awed ( people often told me I was a bit awed ) by this rare ability to put into words the things that- at least in my own dreams - defy verbal description. My dreams, since childhood, or at least for the last six decades, have often seemed similar to some of the passages in this brilliant work! In a journal, which I haphazardly attempt to write in, there are TWO very unique entries which make note of my having had a good, pleasant dream. Not that the rest are nightmares, just such a jumble of bizarre, intersecting images, conversations, encounters with people I seem to know intimately yet never met in reality - that this wonderful piece rings many dusty mindfulness bells from somewhere deep in my questionable consciousness.
There’s something deeply human in recognizing fragments of our own inner life in someone else’s words, especially when those fragments come from dreams that don’t quite belong to language.
I’m grateful this piece resonated with that part of your experience. Knowing it touched something lived, remembered, or half-remembered means more to me than I can easily put into words.
The piece feels like someone drifting through a dream that knows too much about their fears, a place where the mind refuses to rest even when the body begs for it.
The recurring keyhole becomes a wound an opening you never asked for, always watching, always returning.
The girl who stays just out of reach feels like a longing the heart keeps chasing even when it knows it can’t hold her.
Every shift in the dream alleys, fields, cities mirrors the emotional chaos of wanting someone who keeps slipping away.
The paralysis captures that helplessness perfectly: the body frozen while the heart runs itself raw.
Her humming becomes the only thread of comfort, a fragile sound that feels like hope and loss at the same time.
The eye behind the keyhole is the most human terror the sense that something sees you when you can’t see yourself.
The blink that ends the dream feels like mercy and abandonment in the same breath.
Waking up sweating and crying carries the weight of a grief you can’t name, only feel.
In the end, the exhaustion of the day ahead becomes its own quiet confession: some dreams don’t end when you wake; they follow you into the light.
Thank you for reading it that deeply.Some things only exist fully when someone else notices them.
I am awed ( people often told me I was a bit awed ) by this rare ability to put into words the things that- at least in my own dreams - defy verbal description. My dreams, since childhood, or at least for the last six decades, have often seemed similar to some of the passages in this brilliant work! In a journal, which I haphazardly attempt to write in, there are TWO very unique entries which make note of my having had a good, pleasant dream. Not that the rest are nightmares, just such a jumble of bizarre, intersecting images, conversations, encounters with people I seem to know intimately yet never met in reality - that this wonderful piece rings many dusty mindfulness bells from somewhere deep in my questionable consciousness.
Thank you for sharing this, Julian.
There’s something deeply human in recognizing fragments of our own inner life in someone else’s words, especially when those fragments come from dreams that don’t quite belong to language.
I’m grateful this piece resonated with that part of your experience. Knowing it touched something lived, remembered, or half-remembered means more to me than I can easily put into words.