MILKY WAY: A POETRY COLLECTION - A NIGHTMARE

How do we define a nightmare?

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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.

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A nightmare is not always terror.

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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.

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The tragedy is not an empty vessel.

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The tragedy is a vessel

That no longer expects rain.

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It waits beneath an open sky,

Wide-mouthed and patient no longer,

Baked by seasons of disappointment

Into something resembling stone.

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It has forgotten the language of storms.

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Dust gathers where hope once settled.

Silence collects where prayers once landed.

And little by little,

Absence learns to wear the face of permanence.

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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.

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A nightmare rarely arrives screaming;

It prefers good manners.

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It joins us at breakfast,

Asks about our plans,

And smiles politely from across the table

While loosening the bolts

Holding tomorrow together.

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It teaches us that fear

Is not always the fear of ending.

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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.

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Perhaps that is what a nightmare truly is:

Not darkness,

But the exhaustion of light.

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Not the collapse,

But the silence afterward—

The moment the shattered pieces realize

No one is coming to gather them.

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A nightmare is discovering

That survival and living

Have never been faithful synonyms.

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And still—

Morning arrives.

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The kettle whistles.

Birds rehearse their ancient songs.

The earth continues its indifferent orbit,

Untroubled by what was lost in the night.

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Yet beneath the rubble,

Beneath the panic and the ruin,

Something stubborn survives:

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A pulse.

A flicker.

A rebellion so small

It almost escapes notice—

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The reckless suspicion

That the vessel may one day

Expect rain again.

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Because the cruelest thing a nightmare ever did

Was not steal the light;

It merely taught us

To feel foolish for searching for it.

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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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