Where the Sky Once Wept

I had a dream.

Not the kind where you wake with a smile and forget it by breakfast.

Not the kind where your mind tucks it away in the folds of your pillow.

No. This was something else.

This dream was smoke and ash. Blood and silence.

It burned itself into my bones.

I’ve had it a hundred times since. A thousand, maybe more.

In this dream, I stand in a city that doesn’t exist anymore.

The buildings are not broken—they are obliterated.

There are no cries, not because no one is suffering,

but because the air has swallowed sound.

Even grief is quiet now.

I don’t understand why I keep returning here.

Why my feet step again and again into the ruins.

Why my soul trembles at a memory that isn’t mine

—and yet it is.

Believe me when I say:

I saw the war.

I saw stars burn out like dying hopes.

I saw darkness fall over everything, like a curtain drawn too soon.

Where prayers had once lived, only ash remained.

Where embraces once healed, only corpses clung to fading warmth.

I saw laughter—yes, laughter—in the most monstrous places.

Soldiers grinning while innocence bled out beneath them.

Children giggling as they played with wreckage,

too young to know that it was once their future.

And through it all, through every scene of horror,

you were there.

You.

And me.

We weren’t untouched—we were torn.

We weren’t heroes—we were helpless.

I saw myself, my chest a battlefield.

Not metaphor.

A true field of war.

A place where angelic armies battled over the ruins of my soul.

One side fought to protect who I once was.

The other, to drown me in who I feared I could become.

There were moments of loud, desperate sobs.

Moments of whispered goodbyes.

But always, your arms were around me.

Not to save me.

But to remind me I had once been worth saving.

It wasn’t just a nightmare.

It was a prophecy.

Or a memory.

Or maybe both.

I saw a world stripped of destiny—

where life meant survival, not purpose.

Where childhood was stolen while it slept.

Where dreams were luxury items only the dead could afford.

Hope whispered, once—barely.

But silence devoured it before it reached my ears.

There are no words for such suffering.

None that matter.

Because if you haven’t lived it,

you will never understand it.

And if you have—

then you already do.

This is the part I beg you to hear:

Sometimes we are living inside the very nightmares we swore we'd escape.

Look around you.

Listen.

Don’t cover your ears just because the truth is uncomfortable.

Don’t close your eyes just because it doesn’t touch you—

yet.

I’ve seen joy in hell.

I’ve seen the divine scattered across bullet-ridden pavement.

I’ve seen more tears than any heart should hold.

And in all of it, I saw us.

You.

And me.

Each time, I wake with the memory of your arms.

Your breath against mine.

Your fear. Your fury. Your forgiveness.

I remember you holding me

like I was the last piece of something good in a world gone mad.

And maybe I was.

And maybe you were.

You see, this wasn’t just a dream about destruction.

It was about what survives it.

Love.

Grief.

Truth.

Us.

Now I know why I keep returning.

Because I still have a choice.

Because we still have a choice.

To stop this from becoming real.

To stop sleepwalking through the beginning of our own extinction.

The skies still cry.

But the stars haven’t all gone out.

Not yet.

So rise with the angels.

Lift your soul before it forgets how to shine.

See what you don't want to see.

Live as if someone lives inside you.

Because they do.

Don’t tear open the old wounds.

But don’t hide your tears either.

Let them fall.

Let them cleanse.

Let them remind you:

You were there.

I was there.

We are still here.