Sleep is my escape, a secret world built from the fragments of my heart. That's the thing about trauma and isolation: sleep becomes a doorway. A doorway to a world that exists only in the vast landscapes of imagination. A world where fairytales breathe, and phoenixes carry you from one place to another.

A world where a waterfall of your favourite drink pours into a crystal-clear pool, its mist carrying the smell of freshly bloomed lilies. Flowers of every hue become home to butterflies with wings like liquid gold, marked with delicate silver swirls, as if the stars themselves had landed for a moment. They dance through the air, weaving in and out as if following a gentle rhythm only they can hear. Sunlight filters through towering trees, brushing your skin with warmth. Fireflies drift lazily, their lights flickering like tiny stars. And in the heart of it all lies a palace or maybe a small cottage, both equally beautiful.

Somewhere in all that wonder, the world begins to slow. The colours linger a little longer. The light softens. Movement itself seems to pause, just long enough for its meaning to surface. What once felt like wonder alone starts to reveal the quiet longing beneath it. A longing to be understood rather than merely seen.

The phoenixes and waterfalls are not born from need, but from longing. From wishes folded carefully and hidden away, where the world cannot reach them with its judgment. They are the quiet wants of the heart, tucked deep beneath composure, given wings only in places where no one is watching closely enough to ask why.

Here, those wants are allowed to breathe. They shimmer into existence as colour and light, as myth and wonder. This world asks for nothing in return. It does not demand restraint, strength, or control. It simply exists as a place where armour is no longer required, an escape not from reality itself, but from the masks worn to survive it.

There is a kind of need so deeply human that many are taught to deny it. And so, that need finds other places to exist. It slips into dreams, into imagined worlds, into the spaces where no one is watching closely enough to tell you to be stronger.

In this world, wanting warmth is no longer something to hide. Craving safety is no longer something to apologise for. There is only permission to rest, to fall apart gently, to exist without armour.

And somewhere in the quiet of all the magic, the world folds in on itself, shaping not just what is seen, but what is felt. The creatures, the rivers, the blooms they shift and shimmer, but their magic is always intimate, personal, like the secret corners of the heart. Every detail is different for everyone. For one, a phoenix may soar; for another, a griffin. Shapes shift with dreams, with memories, with the wildest reaches of the mind.

But beyond all the colour, the shimmer, the dancing, there is something quieter. Something that no creature, no river, no spell could carry except in presence and stillness. It is the feeling of being held: bones and breath softened, shoulders unburdened, chest expanding as if it finally has space to open. Of being seen not as a collection of armour or words, but as the quiet, unpolished self that usually hides away. Of being heard, every tremble and unspoken crack acknowledged without question.

There is poetry in that embrace. Each tear, a release of a wound once carried alone, and yet those same tears become the band-aid that mends it. A soft, healing alchemy that turns pain into solace. The arms around you are quiet and absolute. They hold you like the world has stopped turning, like time itself leans in to watch you unravel safely. The warmth seeps in, not flashy or bright, but deep, threading through ribs and lungs, filling the hollow spaces you didn't know could be filled.

The steady beat against your chest. The softness of shoulders under your hands. The press of another's presence against your own. It is enough. Enough to let the weight of everything you've carried slip. Enough to let the tears fall freely. Enough to let the part of you that always hides finally breathe.

There is something ineffably poetic in being held together when your world is falling apart. In the way, the chaos around you does not intrude on the safety between two arms. In the way the heart can crumble and yet feel utterly intact.

For a heartbeat, I am small, vulnerable, a child again. My guard falls away, and in the press of arms against mine, in the steady warmth and rhythm of another heartbeat, I feel whole. Maybe it is the joining of two hearts, a quiet fitting together that only happens in these rare, fragile moments. The world outside ceases to exist, and for a fleeting instant, everything inside me is exactly as it should be.

And then, like a spark in the dark, a memory surfaces forgotten until now. That warmth, that safety, I have known it before. The arms that once held me as a child, calming my tears, letting me exist small and vulnerable, they live again, vivid in my body. My chest remembers the quiet steadiness, the pulse against mine, and my mind aches with the knowledge that such safety is real, even if fleeting.

And in that moment, it is better than any phoenix soaring across the sky, any waterfall spilling into crystal pools, any butterfly alighting on a bloom of liquid gold. All the magic I conjured, all the colours and shapes I imagined, pale in comparison to this: the simple, unshakable truth of being held, of being safe, of being allowed to let go.

I wake with a start, my chest hollow and full all at once. The dream recedes like water from the shore, leaving only the imprint of warmth and trust I cannot yet find in waking life. My body remembers the rhythm of another heartbeat, the press of arms that held me, the softness that let me crumble without fear. And even now, hours later, the memory lingers in every hollow, every rib, every tremble, whispering of something I may never feel again. I carry it anyway, this quiet ache, this fragile reminder of what it is to be utterly safe, utterly seen, if only for a fleeting heartbeat.

And maybe that is why it can only exist there. After everything real life has taken, I no longer trust myself to let my guard down enough to feel that kind of embrace again. I loved how it felt, how safe, how whole, but loving it is exactly what makes it dangerous. In reality, lowering my guard has consequences: betrayal, loss, the slow rebuilding of walls I never wanted in the first place. The yearning doesn't disappear; it settles in, constant and unresolved, because acting on it would mean creating yet another world to survive the aftermath. And somehow, I know that no imagined place could ever recreate what that dream held, not without breaking it. If I tried to find it in waking life and failed, the memory would lose its meaning. So I keep it untouched, preserved where it cannot be disproven. Like a child who refuses to stop believing in fairy godmothers and castles, not because they are naïve, but because the world without them is colder than they are ready to accept.

Perhaps one day I will find it again in waking life, but for now, I like it exactly as it is, untouched, whole, and undisturbed.