Stillness isn’t surrender.
It’s survival.
I’ve grown with the pain. Not around it.
I’ve become the place that holds it.
The bark didn’t cover me.
It became me.
I had a dream.
I looked into a mirror, and my face was cypress bark.
Not a mask—something that had grown in.
The eyes weren’t mine.
But I knew it was still me.
My hair had become leaves.
Every color of every season.
Lichen bloomed across my skin like memory that wouldn’t let go.
I wasn’t afraid.
I wasn’t moving.
I was watching.
I was rooted in a lake—ankle-deep in still water, stuck in it.
Above me, something circled.
Huge. Silent.
A monster made of pressure.
It didn’t scream.
It just took—
the light, the breath, the color from everything.
And I stood there.
I didn’t fight.
I didn’t run.
I just… stayed.
I made this image after the dream.
It’s not a recreation.
It’s what I felt.
The eye still watching.
The bark still growing.
The silence still speaking.
Grief doesn’t always hit like a storm.
Sometimes it hovers.
Sometimes it drains you slowly, until you’re just a shape in the water.
This dream didn’t give me answers.
It didn’t give me power.
It gave me stillness.
And somehow—
that was enough.