the weight of nightmares

there is a peculiar cruelty in the way nightmares grip us, how they arrive without invitation, pulling us into rooms built from shadow, turning familiar faces into strangers and safe places into cages. they are architects of unease, weaving memory with fear, longing with loss, truth with distortion, until we no longer know what is real.

the body does not care that it was a dream. it trembles as if chased. the heart pounds as if hunted. the lungs ache as though they forgot how to breathe. and when we wake, we carry the ghost of it, a residue clinging to our skin, an echo whispering through the corridors of thought.

nightmares thrive in silence. they steal our rest, fracture the fragile peace of sleep, and remind us that control is a thin veil, easily torn. but for all their cruelty, they are not prophecy. they are not chains. they are reflections of what we hide—unspoken fears, old wounds, anxieties buried beneath daily survival. sometimes they mean nothing at all, a storm of static and sparks that dissolves as quickly as it forms.

still, their weight is undeniable. to wake from a nightmare is to be reminded of how breakable safety feels, how the mind can turn traitor, how even in rest, we are not always free.

and yet—morning always comes. the sun insists on rising. the body, trembling, steadies. the heart, though heavy, remembers rhythm. the nightmare unravels thread by thread until it is nothing more than smoke in the daylight.

this is their paradox. they show us our terror, but they also reveal our resilience. to wake is to resist. to rise is to reclaim. to move through the day despite the shadows is proof that even the darkest dream cannot claim us.

nightmares may haunt, but they do not own us. they dissolve. and we remain.

with ink + bloom, 🌻