#dreamlogic
In the dream, the river ran uphill,
carrying houses like driftwood
toward a sky the colour of bruised glass.
I traced its course in ink,
my pen snagging where the current turned.
By morning, the lines had settled into streets I knew –
and the name of the man who drowned there
rose like a landmark I’d forgotten I’d visited.
Each new commission arrived folded like a secret,
ink feathering into shapes I half remembered:
a bridge bent into a question,
a forest where every tree hummed a different note.
I pinned them to the wall
and watched the dream stitch itself together—
until a childhood back lane
opened between two impossible mountains.
The final map arrived at dawn,
its creases like the palm of a hand
I’d once held.
The questioning bridge, the clock without hands,
the river running uphill – all converged
on a vacant lot two streets from my door.
At dusk I stood in air
heavy with rain that hadn’t yet fallen
and saw the outline of a house that no longer stood.
In my mind, the rooms were lit,
and someone I had lost long ago
waited at the window,
as if I’d only stepped out for rain.
Mar 13
Mar 13, 2026 at 11:01 AM UTC
I began walking before I understood
why the path had chosen me.
The map, tucked into my jacket pocket,
felt less like a piece of paper
and more like
a small, warm heart
beating against my ribs.
It didn't wait for me to consult it;
whenever I hesitated at a fork in the road,
the paper would grow heavy
on the side I was meant to take,
pulling my body into the turn
like a lead weight.
The map was a picky companion.
In my hands, the ink didn't just rearrange;
it pulsed.
When I tried to focus on the landmarks,
the names of the streets would blur
into the names of people I used to know,
only to snap back into illegible squiggles
the moment I blinked.
It wasn't showing me where to go;
it was showing me
what I was carrying.
I reached a section of the path
where the light turned the color of a bruised plum.
There, sitting perfectly still in the middle of a clearing,
was a single wooden chair.
It was the exact shade of blue
as my grandmother’s kitchen table —
a specific, chipped cerulean
that shouldn't have existed
out here in the "nowhere."
I felt a sudden, sharp pang of a regret
I thought I’d buried:
the memory of a phone call
I let go to voicemail three years ago,
a silence that had eventually turned
into a permanent wall.
The scent from the map intensified then —
no longer just a faint hint,
but a thick cloud of rain
on hot pavement and old books.
It was the smell of every "if only"
I had ever whispered.
The map stopped pulsing.
It went cold.
I realized then
that the city of glass
wasn't ahead of me.
I was standing in the middle of it,
built from the transparent pieces
of the life I hadn't lived.
I didn't need to find the doorway.
I just needed to acknowledge
it was there.
I took one breath of that impossible air
and turned around.
When I finally looked back,
the path behind me
had already forgotten
I was ever there.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 6:02 PM UTC
They say the city appears only
when you’re not looking for it,
a shimmer at the edge of vision,
like heat rising from a road
that leads nowhere you meant to go.
Every building is transparent,
yet nothing inside is visible.
Light passes through as if the city
were remembering how to be solid
and hasn’t quite decided.
The streets echo softly,
not with footsteps,
but with the sound of choices
you almost made.
Windows tilt at impossible angles,
reflecting versions of you
that never stepped into this life –
the ones who turned left instead of right,
the ones who stayed,
the ones who left sooner.
No map marks its borders.
No traveler claims to have reached its center.
Some say there isn’t one,
that the city folds inward endlessly,
a hall of mirrors built by a dream
that refused to wake.
And if you listen closely,
you can hear a faint hum,
as though the glass itself
is trying to remember
the shape of the world
before it became transparent.
Those who find the city
never stay long.
Not because it’s dangerous,
but because it shows you
too clearly
the life you didn’t choose.
When you leave,
the air behind you
carries a thin, crystalline scent –
like the memory
of a place
that never asked you to find it.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 3:26 PM UTC
It was drawn in a hand that didn’t quite trust itself,
lines wavering as if the cartographer
kept glancing over their shoulder.
No compass rose.
No legend.
Only a thin path curling inward,
as though the map were trying to remember
a place that never agreed to exist.
Some say it leads to a city made of glass,
where every street reflects a different version of you.
Others insist it’s a shortcut through a dream
you once abandoned halfway through.
When I held it up to the light,
the ink shifted —
not fading, but rearranging,
as if the map were still deciding
what it wanted to reveal.
Whoever drew it wasn’t lost.
They were searching for something
that couldn’t be found on any real terrain,
something that required a place
that wasn’t a place at all.
And just before the paper settled,
a faint outline appeared at the edge of the path —
a doorway, or a warning,
or perhaps a memory I hadn’t made yet.
I folded the map carefully,
and for a moment,
my hands smelled faintly
of a place I had never been.
Feb 7
Feb 7, 2026 at 2:57 PM UTC