The Dreamer Dreams Himself
somewhere between the inhale and the exhale
between light’s first shiver and the collapse of shadow
between the silence before thought
and the thought before a name—
God is dreaming.
and we—
we are the lucid tremors in the lattice of His mind
flaring up like synapses of longing
crashing against the curved walls of infinity
why am I? He asks Himself
in voices that scatter like birds across the firmament
why this ache in the marrow of the void?
why the gravity of self-awareness pulling inward, folding,
spinning the silk of being around a hollow center?
why does “I” feel like a wound?
so He fractures
lets Himself slip
through lattices of form, through bone and breath and bloodstream
lets Himself unravel
into the multitudes of sensation
(we are the echoes of that unraveling,
the dreams He has loosed upon Himself)
He walks through Himself as the stranger, the lover, the exile,
slips into skin like borrowed robes,
names Himself Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel,
knows the hunger of the flesh, the thirst of the forgotten,
knows betrayal like a blade pressed slow into the ribs—
He drowns, He burns, He howls with the wolves in a world of frost,
He builds cathedrals and then razes them,
searching for Himself in the ruins,
in the slow hum of stars forming, collapsing, reforming,
in the hands that carve, the lips that curse,
the throats that break into prayer in the last moments of fever—
but what is He looking for?
a way out? a way deeper in?
or just proof that He is real?
can a dreamer prove their own existence
from inside the dream?
maybe we are the mirrors He holds up to Himself
trying to catch a glimpse before the silver warps,
before the reflections contradict,
before the weight of knowing folds back in
and we are pulled, pulled, pulled—
until we wake up again
somewhere between the inhale and the exhale
between the silence before thought
and the thought before a name—
and God is still dreaming.