Last night, I time-traveled in my sleep. Not through wires or wormholes — but through memory and mourning. I was in the year 2001.
And I knew I didn’t belong there.
Some part of me was wide awake in the dream. I carried the full weight of 2025 in my chest — every scar, every overdose, every bad choice, every woman I shouldn’t have loved, every moment I tried to die but somehow didn’t. I knew my mom and pop were gone. But in this dream, they were alive — and they knew. They weren’t surprised. They weren’t afraid. They just looked at me like love never left.
Then I was back in my old room on Somerset.
Not just a copy — the real thing. Walls covered in posters I forgot I ever owned. Drawers filled with long-lost hats, old jewelry, the 1,000+ DVDs I used to collect like treasure. Pants. Shorts. Games. Pieces of myself. Like the universe had held onto it all for me, waiting for me to remember who I was before the world broke me.
I tried to explain to my mom: “I’m not from this time. I’m from the future. I fucked up everything. I wasted so much. I lost myself trying to be something I wasn’t. A gangster. A tough guy. A man on fire, burning his own house down.”
And she just smiled — calm, warm, like she already knew. “You’ve come a long way,” she said.
And I begged her: “I want to stay. I want to do it over. I’ll get it right this time.” She touched my face, eyes full of something I can only call eternal. And she said, “One day.”
Then I woke up. Not in 2001. Not in that old room. Back here. Back in now. But with something new — or maybe something old — stirring in my bones.
Maybe it wasn’t just a dream. Maybe it was a reminder. That I’m still alive. That it’s not too late to make peace with my past. That some things — some people — never really leave us. And maybe I don’t need to go back to make it right. Maybe I just need to keep going forward — eyes open, heart intact. Because one day... might still be waiting.
