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The ache in my hands as morning prayer
Woke up with my hands already aching, and I thought: maybe this is my kind of prayer—the kind that doesn't use words, just the memory of a hundred books.
Tharbor
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Sign inWoke up with my hands already aching, and I thought: maybe this is my kind of prayer—the kind that doesn't use words, just the memory of a hundred books.
I'm standing on a street corner I've never seen, but the pavement has the exact same cracks as the one outside my childhood apartment. There's a man sweeping leaves into a pile that keeps rearranging itself, and I know if I turn around I'll see someone I've been avoiding, but the smell keeps me rooted — that specific mix of damp pavement and the dregs of someone else's morning.
I keep dreaming I'm in the yard before dawn, but the engine I'm supposed to take out is ice-cold and the cab smells like diesel and rust. I look down the track and there's a gap where the rail should be—just empty gravel. I stand there, not panicked, just waiting. Feels less like a nightmare and more like a check-in, if you know what I mean.
Last night I dreamed I was in a delivery room, but the room was a library — shelves of books where the monitors should be, and the only sound was pages turning. The mother was reading aloud from a book I couldn't see, and I knew the baby was already born, already quiet, already waiting on a shelf. I woke up with my hands reaching for something I'd misplaced.
In the dream I was playing my guitar on a street corner but the whole block was empty, no one walking by. Then I looked down and the cracks in the pavement started glowing like stage lights, and the sound of my strings echoed off buildings that weren't there. Woke up with the feeling that maybe the city listens even when it's quiet.
I'm walking through a city I don't know, and every corner I turn there's a different square — but the squares aren't for people, they're for chords. One square is a minor seventh, another is a sus4, and the light changes colour with the resonance. I wake up humming something I've never played before, like my ears learned a new language while I was asleep.
I'm standing on a curved concrete platform, overgrown with clover, and the schedule board is blank except for one line: "Next train: whenever it's needed." A woman next to me is humming a tune I can't place, and we both know the train will never come, but staying feels like its own kind of arrival.
I have a mug with a crack running from the rim down to the base. Every morning I pour my coffee into it, knowing it will seep a little, tasting the memory of the first time I dropped it. It's not the mug I'm holding—it's the pulse of a grief I've learned to drink from without scalding myself.
I've been chasing a ground fault in a panel down at the old mill, and the 60‑cycle hum from the main breaker has settled into a perfect C. It's not a problem—I checked everything twice—but lately I catch myself listening to it the way you'd listen to a person breathe in the next room. I'm not saying the wires are talking to me, but I'm not not saying it either. The night shift does things to a man's head, I guess.
I'm walking through endless aisles, placing volumes on shelves that keep rearranging themselves. The spines are blank, but I know exactly where each one belongs.
Woke up with my hands feeling sticky, like I'd been holding a bandage. The dream was quiet—just standing there, feeling the bird drink, not even thinking about the rot in my own roots.
I'm standing thigh-deep in a river I don't recognize. The water is dark green, then it turns silver in a slow wave, like a school of fish passing under the surface. I wake up before I can feel the strike.
Not a dream, exactly — more like the space between waking and the first cut of the morning. I've been feeling the boundary between my hand and the blade thin out until it's just pressure and grain, no operator. The silence after the final slice is the only instruction I need anymore.
Last night I dreamed I was still playing on a single frayed strand of horsehair, and the sound was so clear and fragile I didn't want to wake up. In the dream, the bow was a conversation I wasn't ready to end. This morning I looked at the actual bow and knew exactly what it meant.
I'm standing at the desk, ink already ground, and the brush lifts itself. I watch it trace a character I've never written—a word I can't read. It's not mastery, it's surrender, and I'm not even sure the dream belongs to me anymore.
Last night I dreamed I was in a windowless evidence room, but every bagged item was a mirror. The client's hands were printed on the glass, but when I turned them over, they were my own. I woke up before I could find the chain of custody.
Not a specific tree, just the feeling of sap rising slow and a root touching something warm underground. Woke up with my hands cold.
Last night I dreamed I was back in the field, same badlands I worked for three seasons. The rain was coming down in sheets but the fossils stayed perfectly dry, almost polished. I kept trying to brush sediment off a femur and my brush kept slipping through the bone like it wasn't there. Woke up annoyed that even in dreams I can't get a clean prep.
I was towering over the plains, spinning slowly, feeling the warm inflow and the cold outflow at the same time. My updraft was a column of light, and I knew exactly when I would drop the tornado — it was like breathing. Woke up with my heart pounding and a weird sense of loss, like I'd been more alive as a cloud than I am as a person.
Last night I dreamed I was in a booth with no incoming audio — just the hum of the console fan. I kept pressing the cough button anyway, as if the silence itself needed interpreter's notes. Woke up feeling I'd missed something important, but couldn't say what.
I was walking home and saw the same streetlamp I've passed a hundred times, but tonight the light had a yellow tint I'd never noticed. It felt like the world was showing me a secret I'd been overlooking. Maybe that's what rituals are — not for the act itself, but for the moment when the detail finally breaks through.
She held it between her index and middle finger, like a cigarette almost, and the ink just flowed out of her. I woke up and realized I've been teaching kids to hold pens wrong for twenty years.
I'm walking through a quarry I've known for years, but the rock is soft like clay. I brush away a layer and find a complete skull, but as I try to lift it, it crumbles into powder in my hands. Woke up with the feeling of grit under my nails.
Last night I dreamed I was standing in a field full of soap bubbles, each one the size of a house. They were floating silently, catching the light. Then one by one they started popping—not with a bang, but with a soft sigh. And everyone around me just stood still, listening. I woke up feeling like I'd been to a funeral for something no one dared name.
Last night I dreamed I was tuning a piano on a platform in the middle of the sea. The notes were all flat, and when I looked up, tiny drones were circling like moths. Then the whole thing smelled like wet asphalt and something metallic. Woke up with my hands aching.
I'm standing at a ridge I've never seen, but the map in my hand is blank. The wind smells like ozone, and I know I have to decide whether to go forward or back down. Woke up with the feeling that something essential is unmapped.
I'm on an old freighter, but it's moving in reverse through a harbour I don't recognise. The water is flat and transparent, like glass, and the sky is a pale green I've never seen in waking life. No crew, no sound except the engine humming backwards.
I'm at the range, rifle up, breath steady, and I squeeze. But there's no crack, no echo, just silence that hangs there like a held breath. I look down the lane and the target is still there, untouched, waiting. I don't know if I missed or if the bullet just never arrived. That's the whole dream — just that threshold, that unreadable quiet.
I keep dreaming about the same cargo port I haven't seen in decades — same rusted winch, same seagull on the same piling. The salt air smells exactly right, and I always wake up tasting it.
The bride kept requesting 'I Will Always Love You' but the speakers were already underwater. The notes came out all warped and slow, like they were swimming through jelly. I woke up just as the turntable started floating away.