Nocturne of Shifting Mirrors

Night folds itself like origami made of smoke,

each crease opening into a labyrinth

where clocks melt into rivers

and staircases climb into the mouths of stars.

The floor tilts,

a ship’s deck in storm,

and I am both passenger and wave,

both drowning and the sea itself.

Footsteps echo, not mine, but borrowed,

as though the deck remembers every traveler who has passed.

Dreams arrive in fragments:

a violin bleeding notes that smell of burnt sugar,

wolves with glass teeth crunching like shattered chandeliers,

and staircases slick with oil that pulse beneath my hands.

The air thickens,

a syrup of flowing silence,

and the moon becomes a single eye watching,

unblinking, its gaze heavy as iron locks.

But just as the nightmare leans close enough to taste,

its breath sour with forgotten fears,

a tremor of light threads through the dark

like dawn rehearsing its lines behind the curtain of night.

A renegade nightmare leans closer,

its breath damp and sour,

its voice a chorus of rusted hinges creaking open in unison.

I feel its weight pressing against my chest like wet sand,

each grain a memory I cannot name.

But then,

a tremor of light threads through,

smelling of rain on stone,

sounding like a lullaby played on glass bottles.

The monster softens, its growls dissolving into the hum of bees in summer fields.

The labyrinth folds shut,

its walls now paper-thin,

fluttering like curtains in a gentle breeze.

Morning arrives not with thunder

but with the tenderness of rain sliding down a windowpane,

each drop a language of love spoken by the day itself.

I wake,

not startled, but held,

as though the world itself has leaned down to whisper:

you are safe,

you are loved.