vim ~/.config/self.rc
i woke up from a strange dream. it wasn’t quite a story. it felt like i was an actor who had forgotten; gone and playing all the characters a little too closely
at first, i was a middle-aged man standing in an abandoned opera house. the curtains hung heavy with dust, and the air itself seemed to breathe in slow. beside me was an old organ, its keys yellowed and brittle. a ghost remembering its body.
then all at once, i was young again. my mother was dying of cancer. her breath came in soft, uneven gasps, like the last page of a letter being read by the wind. i held her hand and wished that love could make a trade, that holding on tightly enough could rewrite what was already written. they only reveal what already hurts.
after that, I was everyone and no one at once — a stranger riding a night train through the rain, a woman waiting by a window that never opened, a child staring down at his fallen ice cream as it melted into the street. each face felt mine, each sorrow strangely familiar.
when i woke, i was only aching, as if the dream were still breathing somewhere inside the room.