Nightmare Rehearsal

The night first opens like a faded theatre curtain
stitched from scraps of forgotten afternoons.

Dreams wander in wearing soft masks of memory,
floating like pale leaves upon a black river of sleep.

Old conversations return as lanterns in distant fog,
their reflections trembling across silent waters.

The mind drifts among them, a patient archivist,
gathering loose photographs from dusty shelves,
while reality, tenacious and sunlit,
still clings to the hem of consciousness
like burrs caught in a traveler's coat.

But the scenery darkens.

The dreamworld grows little proud of itself,
its painted backdrops peeling like old wounds.

Associations breed strange offspring.
A childhood hallway stretches into a temple spires of echoes.

A familiar face melts into smoke and broken mirrors.

Then…

The eyelids betray their sacred duty,
becoming thin curtains through which shadows rehearse.
A mournful dirge rises from beneath the floorboards,
heavy as wet earth upon the chest.

The heart begs these thoughts for dismissal,
urging them toward the memory bank of forgetfulness,
granting leave papers to regrets, losses, and unfinished names,
yet they linger like actors refusing to exit the stage.

Now the nightmare steps forward.

Every recalled sorrow sharpens into iron.
Every abandoned fear unfolds its black wings.
The dream becomes a furnace hung with portraits that bleed moonlight,
a cage of clocks whose teeth grind against the bones of time.

Centerstage, beneath a spotlight cold as a graveyard star,
the nightmare stands in rehearsal, repeating its terrible lines,
perfecting each gesture of ruin,
until suddenly…

A melodic alarm enters the darkness
like a silver hand sweeping aside the curtain.
The atmosphere shatters the eyelids into waking,
and through the retreating shadows drifts a private
Moonlight Sonata.