The passing of faces or the flipping of pages, the same feeling permeates the last spoken words I recall from my dream: they won’t listen.

The tension: tightness, shortness of breath, exhaustion from that frustration: “they won’t listen.”

I fight the conviction, the accusing voice condemning from shadow, sounding like myself: “I am ineffectual. Impotent. Shameful. And what I do: meaningless.”

Trembling, I get out of bed—and prepare to do it all over again.

crescent moon
one dying cricket
singing alone

Photo by Roman Stetskov

first published in Image Curve, April 16, 2020