My Dreams Are For Other People
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Some nights I lie awake
and realise the cruelest truth of all:
my dreams were never meant for me.
They hang in the air just above my reach,
laughing quietly
while I tear myself open trying to touch them.
I write until my fingers ache,
until the screen blurs,
until the sun rises and sets
and rises again,
but my words disappear into the void
as if they were never here at all.
Like I was never here at all.
I whisper my stories into the world,
but the world does not whisper back.
It doesn’t even look up.
It walks right past me,
past everything I build,
everything I bleed into,
everything I dare to hope for.
As if I am invisible.
As if I am unremarkable.
As if I never mattered enough to notice.
I pour hours, years,
whole seasons of my life
into art that dissolves on contact
with the air around it.
People say persistence is the secret,
but I have persisted so long
I’ve worn myself down to the bone
and still nothing breaks open,
still nothing shifts.
Still nothing.
I watch others rise,
their names catching light
like it was waiting for them —
and I stay where I am,
stuck in the quiet,
in the shadows,
in the place where dreams pass over me
the way rain avoids the forgotten.
Some people are chosen.
Some people are seen.
And some of us
are simply the ones who try
and try
and try
and never become anything more
than our trying.
I am the echo no one hears.
The writer no one reads.
The artist no one remembers.
A ghost among the living,
haunting a dream that was never mine to keep.
My dreams are for other people —
I know that now.
They always have been.
And no matter how hard I reach,
how hard I break myself open,
I will always be left with empty hands,
watching everyone else grasp
what I never had a chance to hold.
Keep My Words Alive
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WHERE WORDS MEET MORNING LIGHT
BEGIN EACH DAY WITH SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Every morning at 11:11AM, I send a poem — sometimes soft, sometimes devastating, always true.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
