Chapter 1 · The Call to See

As I Fall Asleep

Cristina do Valle Mirrors of the Infinite

As I fall asleep… The edges fray The lake turns gray And the conscious weep, For I am the green, The clear of day, The wings that stroke the mirror sea, The darkest dust on barren feet, Waves of music in a slow parade, Halting sighs in the breadth of days, Fingers combing through the haze. And what to make of that other plane? The one where contrasts don’t exist, Where numbers jumble in a daze, Where fears and wishes change their place, Desires melting in a hiss. Take the fog and make it yours- turn it to your favorite shape, Lift it far and hug it close, Then take the fantasy by storm. What you dream is yours to keep, A bookmark in your sleeping days, A place to hide and hide and seek, A place to turn the other cheek, And let the beating take its course, For all the days that don’t take place, Can live in memories of dreams, And all the harm that can’t be done, Fades with the rising of a faithful sun.

Reflection

This poem poured out of me in the threshold between waking and dreaming; one of those liminal spaces where the veil thins and the mind loosens its grip. It reflects the mystery of sleep not as escape, but as entry: an entry into the place where imagination and memory fold into each other, where the impossible feels ordinary, and where the heart rehearses truths too bold for the daylight.

The imagery here is blurred, almost wavering, because that is how the experience came. The lake, the gray, the haze…all of it belonged to that strange in-between where everything familiar is undone. It was not frightening, but it was deeply disorienting: a place where numbers lose order, fears shift into longings, and desires dissolve before they can burn me. In the dream world, I began to learn that what feels heavy in waking life can be re-shaped, softened, even undone in the subtle fabric of sleep.

Looking back, I see this poem as my early initiation into trusting the unseen. The lesson here was that dreams are not just random flickers of the subconscious; they are bookmarks of the soul. They hold the days that never happened, the choices never made, the harm never done. They allow us to play with possibility without consequence, to feel the rhythm of another kind of time.

And in that discovery, I began to sense a distortion dissolving: the fear that dreams are meaningless. Through this poem, I saw that they are as real as memory, and sometimes more healing. I also realized how often I held too tightly to waking logic, dismissing what came through the night as “just a dream.” The deeper truth whispered here is that dreams are keepers of our wholeness; they allow us to process, to soften, and to glimpse the freedom of a self unburdened by judgment.

When I wrote As I Fall Asleep, I did not yet know how much the dream world would continue to teach me. But already the invitation was clear: surrender to the fog, shape it gently, and let even the strangest visions remind me that beyond fear and contrast lies a faithful sun, always ready to rise.

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