XIX

The First Night I Dreamt of You 

i.

The night was still whispering when I woke,
light bleeding slow, blue between curtains,
spilling soft into the silence.
It touched everything gently,
the wall, the floor,
my shoulder, like a blessing
I didn’t know how to receive.

I didn’t move.
I let it lay against the side of my face,
as if staying still could hold the dream in place.
As if you might be here,
just beyond the reach of waking,
your name still coiling around my ribs.

The light kept coming.
Soft. Certain.
And I stayed
like something waiting to be chosen.

ii.
The morning didn't rush.
It spilled tender across the room,
stroking the edges of things I hadn’t yet named.
No urgency,
just the quiet ceremony
of light finding me where I lay.

I thought of you then,
not as absence,
but as promise.
Like the way the sun returns
even when the stars feel a little closer.
Like breath, returning before it’s called.

A little fated. 

The dream had already begun slipping away,
but it left something behind:
not your hand,
not your voice
but the quiet shape of hope,
settling soft beneath my sternum.

And I rose,
not because the moment ended,
but because it had finally begun.

Dorothea Blythe