The Stories We Tell Before Sleep
People say I fall asleep too fast.
That I’m always the first to drift, the easiest to rest.
They see the calm, the early nights,
the quiet that fills the room when I close my eyes.
But they don’t know,
Inside, a story is always waking.
Before my breath slows, before my body surrenders to the dark,
my mind blooms like a secret garden,
full of whispers, of dreams, of selves I have not told anyone.
There’s a certain kind of silence that falls before sleep.
Not the silence of peace
but the kind that waits for a story.
And so, I tell one.
Not to escape the world
but to remember who I’d be if fear had never taught me to shrink.
I build a life behind my eyelids:
a love that sees me,
a power that belongs to me,
a version of myself who walks boldly,
and speaks softly only by choice.
Some would call it fantasy.
But I call it a language.
The soul has always spoken in symbols
and mine writes with the ink of yearning,
with scenes I’ve never lived
but somehow always known.
In these dreams, I am not perfect
but I am real,
and I am chosen,
and I belong.
And maybe that’s what matters most.
That before sleep,
before the world pulls me into its rules again,
I get to remember what it means
to want
to hope
to feel
to rehearse joy
like a prayer I don’t know how to say out loud yet.
If this is dreaming,
let it be sacred.
Let it be the rehearsal of healing.
Let it be a soft place for my heart to go
Until the life I build
starts to sound like the story I’ve been telling myself all along.
And if you do the same,
if you write love letters in your head before bed,
if you replay heartbreaks or imagine a different ending,
if you speak with someone in your mind who’s never really been there—
you’re not broken.
You’re just trying to return
to a self you miss,
or a future you’re still brave enough to believe in.
So dream.
Softly.
Loudly.
Repeatedly.
Until the distance between who you imagine
and who you are
feels like coming home.
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