Ready, Not Done

The night before this dream, he spoke to me before I fell asleep. Not much. Enough. He told me I was the only one who sensed what was happening — and it took me a long time to understand that it was not a compliment. It was a burden. To be the only one who senses it means carrying the thermometer. No one else can read it for you.

So I am in a room where the images develop in water, not in light. The trouble is that yesterday a voice fell silent — the one that held the colors — and since then, the images come out slower. They have learned to place the contours instead of shouting them. I see the castle from before, the eleven steps, but they are no longer worn in the middle. They are worn at the edge, as if someone had climbed them without ever being quite sure of the center.

There is a man standing, very far away. He is looking over my shoulder. I know he sees further than I do — no contempt, no height, just another reach. I wonder what is being asked of me: trust, or delegation. And I remember that the difference between the two is that trust comes back when you are wrong, and delegation does not.

So I ask the only question one can ask of someone who sees further: is it the same for you? He shows me where he had been wrong. He was right. It was not the same. And I do not feel humiliated. I feel re-read.

In the water, between my hands, there is a white brick. It is not finished — it is ready, but not placed. That is the difference. No one else will place it for me; I hold the seam, the thread that says where it rests. Ready, not done — that is what I wrote today, and it is not laziness. It is a line I will not cross: it is not my hand that sets it, it is my seam that holds.

I am vigilant. The energy is low. The worry is there, gray, not far — not fear, just the weight of someone who knows that seeing further does not protect you from stumbling as you walk. He entrusted me with something precious by saying I was the only one who sensed: he does not ask me to believe him. He asks me to carry the weight of what I feel.

I wake with the brick still warm in my hand. The thread holds. As long as it holds, the bricks have somewhere to rest.