How do we define a nightmare?
Perhaps it is the breach of a pact—
The quiet agreement between the eye and the dark.
The moment calmness turns traitor,
And reality slips its cold hand
Beneath the door.
A nightmare is not always terror.
Sometimes it is a familiar room
Seen from the wrong angle.
A clock that continues ticking
Long after time has abandoned the place.
A house still standing,
Yet somehow empty of shelter.
The tragedy is not an empty vessel.
The tragedy is a vessel
That no longer expects rain.
It waits beneath an open sky,
Wide-mouthed and patient no longer,
Baked by seasons of disappointment
Into something resembling stone.
It has forgotten the language of storms.
Dust gathers where hope once settled.
Silence collects where prayers once landed.
And little by little,
Absence learns to wear the face of permanence.
A window that no longer watches for dawn.
A lighthouse that has forgotten the sea.
A garden that survives the winter
Only to stop believing in spring.
A nightmare rarely arrives screaming;
It prefers good manners.
It joins us at breakfast,
Asks about our plans,
And smiles politely from across the table
While loosening the bolts
Holding tomorrow together.
It teaches us that fear
Is not always the fear of ending.
Sometimes it is the fear of remaining—
Of carrying the same ache
Through different years;
Of watching unanswered prayers
Grow old beside you;
Of hearing your own footsteps
Echo through rooms
That once answered back.
Perhaps that is what a nightmare truly is:
Not darkness,
But the exhaustion of light.
Not the collapse,
But the silence afterward—
The moment the shattered pieces realize
No one is coming to gather them.
A nightmare is discovering
That survival and living
Have never been faithful synonyms.
And still—
Morning arrives.
The kettle whistles.
Birds rehearse their ancient songs.
The earth continues its indifferent orbit,
Untroubled by what was lost in the night.
Yet beneath the rubble,
Beneath the panic and the ruin,
Something stubborn survives:
A pulse.
A flicker.
A rebellion so small
It almost escapes notice—
The reckless suspicion
That the vessel may one day
Expect rain again.
Because the cruelest thing a nightmare ever did
Was not steal the light;
It merely taught us
To feel foolish for searching for it.
And the most haunting darkness
Is not the night itself,
But the morning that arrives unchanged,
And still finds us looking toward the horizon.
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