# The Solitary Dream I woke to find myself alone, the world still dark, the stars still burning. A dream had fled—I could not hold it, dissolving like morning mist between my fingertips. What was it? Some forgotten thing, some face I almost knew, a room where I had lived before, a voice calling my name through corridors of sleep. The night pressed down, heavy with the weight of all I could not remember. I lay there, breathing, trying to gather the fragments— but they scattered, each one a small light winking out. And I understood then that some things are meant to slip away, that forgetting is its own kind of grace, that the solitary dream belongs only to the dark, only to the space between what we were and what we'll become. So I closed my eyes again and did not search for it. Let it go, I whispered. Let it go. The stars kept their vigil. The world kept its secrets. And I, at last, kept my silence.