But I dreamt not of roads.
I dreamt of water.

An endless sea, black and reflective like dark marble.
I’m alone in the crow’s nest of a wooden ship, the hull rocking beneath me, the soft splash of calm night waves.
The stars spilled thick across the sky—so thick there wasn’t a patch of black between them.
The Moon skimmed the surface of the water, resisting just enough to ripple into silver.
Above me, infinite dots. Below me, the void—Darkness. Currents. Bottomless pits.

Later, on deck, after charting my intended course, something shifted—just beneath the surface. Not a shape. Not yet. A shimmer. A distortion. Water churned from below.
The ship creaked a little softer, like it too had noticed.

I didn’t flinch.
I leaned in—as if to listen.

The air changed first.
Not heavier. Just... slower. Like breath underwater. The salt didn’t sting anymore—it sweetened.

Somewhere behind the mast: a tremble in the ropes.
A rhythm, maybe. Not quite a sound. More like pressure—the kind that builds before thunder.

My eyes didn’t move, but beneath the hull,
I felt her.

Not watching. Not waiting.
Calling.

There’s a certain kind of power in presence that doesn’t announce itself.
No voice. No command. Just atmosphere— a shift in the very air itself.

Like when someone walks into the room and everything inside you leans before you realize you moved.

That’s how the call came.

Not in sound—
but in silence, sharpened.
A draw in the current that made my lungs forget to sting.

I didn’t hear a song. Not yet.
I felt it.

The Call of the Siren.

The Siren’s call doesn’t descend into ruin.
It refracts—
a ripple of recognition.
A mirror in motion, asking me to see.

In the dream, I peered over the stern of the ship.

I saw her.

Not her flesh, but her form.
The shape of my unspoken wants.
The rhythm of ache I thought I’d buried.
The curve of my fear—gentle, knowing.

What is love? Is it just neurochemistry? Or more?

I didn’t wake up gasping.
No thunder cracked. No shipwreck came.
I imagine the ship still sails—drifting in the tides of that sea.

There is no definitive end to what I saw.
But I still feel her. In my retinas.
Burned into the grain of my eyes.

And I think that’s what haunted me. Not her voice, but the fact that she never needed one. Just presence. Just form. She never asked to be chased. She was showing me something I’d forgotten:

Myself.

Maybe I dreamt of voyage
not to find her—
but to remember what I felt
when I saw myself through her.

Sometimes when I’m driving at night,
a certain silence comes over me.
And I remember that sea.

Not as a dream.
But as direction.

Maybe she was Rome— not the place, but the return.

The way all roads, even those washed over by salt and time, still lead back
to something true.

The hunger I buried. The fear I shaped on the anvil of perception. The mirror I ran from.

I’m not ready for the port of call—
but I’ve seen her.
And I won’t pretend I didn’t.

To feel that deep is to drown.
To hold silence is power.

This dream is no longer a beautiful memory.
It’s a recognition.

That I was seen before I tried to be seen.

Peace upon your voyage.
—J.C.