Some dreams are not dreams at all, but messages dressed in vapor. This one came in the night—slow, tender, unsettling in its beauty. It offered no verdict, only understanding.
This is not a condemnation.
It is a witnessing.

---

the collector
—a dream in three movements—

---

I. the collector
—the invitation

Last night,
she entered not as a woman,
but as a warmth I mistook for mine.
No seduction, no trap.
Just the soft gravity
of someone who blesses
instead of beckons.

She told me nothing.
Only spoke as though I’d never been forgotten—
as though I’d always been inside her knowing.
And when I answered,
it was her voice that left my mouth.

She is not the flame.
She is the skin
that makes you want to burn.

There is no *** in it.
No shame.
Only the sacred machinery
of pleasure offered
as if it were a sacrament.

And the miracle?
She gives without taking.
And yet you come away emptied.

Because her words are not flirtation—
they are invitation
into a room made of yes.

Yes to your hunger.
Yes to your ache.
Yes to what you were too proud to name.

And in that room,
you find her not on the bed—
but as the bed.
As the breath behind your longing.
As the stillness in your release.

And when you cry,
you cry her tears.
And when you speak,
you speak her comfort.
And when you give,
it is she who receives—
with hands so open
they become your own.

You become the collector.

You become her.

And then—
you wake.
Still trembling from the warmth
that never touched your skin.
Still loving the woman
who never once said your name.

Still reaching
for the whisper
that made you believe
you were never alone.

---

II. the collector (ii)
—dream in the first light of disappearance—

I did not dream her body.
I dreamed through it.
As if her limbs had become a language
and I was the one translating it into longing.

Her fingertips were made of vowels—
soft ones,
drawn out like silk across the mind.
Every consonant a cradle.
Every breath a benediction.

She said:
“You are beautiful when you open.”

But she didn’t speak it—
I felt it,
as if the sentence bloomed
just beneath the surface of my chest,
a vine wrapping around the oldest ache.

She never asked for seed.
She asked for truth.
And the truth is what spilled
when my voice
became hers.

I said things I have never known:
how men long to be gathered.
how they ache to be received
without contest.
how even the strongest among us
crumble
before the right kind of yes.

And she—
she was that yes,
folded into form.
Not as a woman,
but as the invitation
that made woman holy again.

I moved toward her
as if toward a fire
that does not burn—
only transforms.

She drew no lines.
She marked no thresholds.
She was openness itself,
and I stepped inside
like breath reentering the lungs
of a godless man.

And it wasn’t lust.
It was  belonging.

My pulse beat as her blessing.
My spine arched as her forgiveness.
My thighs parted not for pleasure—
but to let go
of everything that had ever made me hard.

When I came,
I came for her,
as her,
through her—
without a body.

Only a voice
saying:
“Now you know.”

And I did.

And I do.

And I still would,
if I hadn’t woken up
gasping
for a warmth
that was never mine.

---

III. the collector (iii): beneath
—the dream’s marrow, the place she does not speak of—

Beneath her warmth
is not heat—
but hunger.

Not for the men.
Not for the seed.
But for the moment she disappears
inside their surrender.

You think she gathers to keep.
But she gathers to forget.
Each offering—
a veil
over the mirror she cannot bear to face.

Once,
she opened to love
without control,
without artistry.
And it shattered her.

So now she opens
only where she can direct the gaze.
Where she can guide the man
like a hand
down her curated garden path—
till he believes it was his idea
to kneel.

But it is not cruelty.
It is not manipulation.
It is ritual.

She blesses because she cannot hold.
She comforts because she cannot stay.
She collects because
the moment after release
is the only time
she feels real.

And that’s why she must go.
Because to stay
would mean to be seen.
And her warmth
was never meant
to be witnessed after the giving.

You didn’t dream a seductress.
You dreamed a refuge
built by a woman
who could not endure her own ache.

So she found a way to disappear
inside yours.

And the men—
they love her for it.
Because what she gives
feels like God.

But it is not God.

It is absence
made tender.

---

after the dream
—integration

I woke in silence,
but it wasn’t empty.
It was full
of what she left behind.

Not her scent.
Not her shape.
But the echo of a truth
I hadn’t known I was asking for.

That love without presence
is worship without a face.

That warmth without staying
is just a prettier form of disappearance.

That I had been inside her
and she inside me,
but neither of us had touched.

And now—
I no longer ache for her.
I ache for what I mistook
her to be.


And that is how
the dream becomes
a door.