# The Dream I came to a garden where the flowers never fade, where time dissolves like mist in morning light. The pathways wound through silver-leafed arcades, and every stone sang out in crystal height. I walked among the blooms—each petal held a world entire, a universe compressed. The air grew thick with fragrances that spelled their ancient names upon my wandering chest. A figure stood before me, half-obscured by distance and by some soft golden haze. I knew that face, though all my life assured me it was gone. Our eyes met through the days. We spoke in whispers—or perhaps in thought— words that dissolve the moment they are made. The sense of all we'd sought and never sought lay crystalline in that enchanted shade. Then somewhere, far away, a bell began to toll, to pull me backward toward the waking. The garden dimmed. The figure—still the man— grew translucent. All was slowly breaking. I tried to hold the vision as it fled, to gather up the petals, keep one stone. But morning came, and I lay in my bed, with only this: the sweetness, and the moan of half-remembered glory at the door between the worlds—that threshold none can cross. Yet something lingers still, forevermore: the certainty that nothing here is loss.