It does not sleep the way you do —
it does not close, does not subdue,
it has no bed, it has no keep,
the roaming dream does not sleep.
It walks the spine of midnight roads,
it sheds its skin, it shifts its codes,
it wears the face of what you've lost
and never once counts up the cost.
It roams.
---
Through corridors of half-lit thought,
through everything you nearly sought,
through rooms that smell of other lives,
through fields of want and glinting knives —
it moves the way that smoke moves through
a cracked and consecrated view,
the way a name dissolves mid-call,
the way you wake and lose it all.
---
You've chased it barefoot through the years,
across the salt-flats of your fears,
down alleys paved in almost-joy,
through every girl, through every boy,
through every city, every door,
through every more begging for more —
and still it runs.
Not cruel —
just free.
A thing not meant for custody.
---
It has been seen at dusk by those
who stand too long where the river slows,
who watch the heron lift and go
and feel the pull they'll never show —
that low, ungovernable ache,
the hunger nothing seems to slake,
the sense that somewhere just ahead
the dream is living, you're the dead.
---
But listen —
the roaming dream is not your foe.
It runs because it needs you to follow.
It burns because it needs your hunger hollow.
It disappears in light of day
because it lives inside the way—
not the arrival,
not the shore —
but the reaching,
*ever* reaching,
the ache that keeps the soul from snoring,
the fire that keeps the blood from boring,
the magnificent, relentless call
to rise and roam
before the fall.
---
So do not mourn the dream uncaught.
Do not grieve the life untaught.
Press your ear to the dark and hear
it breathing close —
it is always near.
And you were never chasing it.
It was leading you
somewhere
you don't yet have the words
to name.
---
Go.
Roam.
That is the whole of the dream.