Once Upon a Dream
Once upon a dream,
in twilight’s fragile seam,
I heard a dragon cry—
not fury, but a fractured hymn
torn loose across the sky.
Its scales, like shattered constellations,
dimmed beneath a trembling blade;
a sword of silver sorrow fell,
and through its ancient heart was laid.
Once upon a dream,
a glimmer split the dark—
not death, but some becoming spark.
A beam of molten, gilded fire
descended where the beast had lain,
like dusk dissolving into dawn,
like grief transfigured into flame.
Once upon a dream,
I saw the tome unseal—
a relic wrought of whispered time,
its ink alive, its truths revealed.
Each page a breath of something older,
each word a quiet, sovereign power,
that spoke of endings dressed as ashes
and rebirths cloaked in ruin’s hour.
Once upon a dream,
the heavens seemed to bend—
the air grew thick with unseen hands
that shaped both breaking and transcend.
The dragon’s form, once pierced and fallen,
did not succumb to mortal end;
it shed its pain like weathered skin
and rose—remade, refined, unpenned.
Once upon a dream,
the witching hour took hold;
the daylight fled in reverent hush,
the world grew hushed; the dark grew bold.
Yet in that deep and hollow silence,
where lesser hearts might learn to fear,
there stirred a pulse beneath the ruin—
a strength that only night makes clear.
Once upon a dream,
I watched with widening sight
as what was slain refused the grave
and gathered shadow into might.
Its wings, once torn, unfurled like scripture
written in a fiercer hand;
its breath no longer born of anguish,
but forged by trials it could withstand.
Once upon a dream,
I woke—but not the same.
The echoes lingered in my bones,
a quiet, consecrated flame.
For what is loss, if not a doorway?
What is breaking, if not art?
What seems an ending in the body
may be an awakening of the heart.
Once upon a dream,
I came to understand:
nothing perishes to nothing—
it merely shifts at fate’s command.
The dragon did not die that night,
nor did its fire depart—
it only shed its former self
to rise more sovereign than it was.
And so, within the hidden chambers
where my own undoing's gleam,
I carry still that ancient knowing—
first whispered once…
…upon a dream.
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