poem

I Often Dream of Apocalypse

A reflection on collapse, fear, responsibility, and choosing to become a source of light in despairing times.

I don't often speak of it,

But at night, I dream of apocalypse.

Not metaphorical collapse, but real endings.

Fire. Famine. Desperation.

And the quiet ache of trying to survive in a world that's already gone.

For years, I tried to decode these dreams—

Searching for metaphor and meaning,

I looked for what they might mean in my life, right now—

too afraid to acknowledge the most obvious message.

The real nightmare isn't the dreams themselves—

it's the waking world.

A world that day by day, more and more, resembles them.

In these dreams, I often find myself marooned in desolate places—

places we were never meant to inhabit.

This is the destiny we are creating.

It is the fires we are setting,

that will bring it about.

Hell is not some distant dimension.

It is what we create—

When we disconnect from our planet,

From each other,

And from the truth of who we are.

What happens next is everything.

The greatest enemy we face is fear:

Fear that keeps us separate from one another.

Fear that keeps us from facing our own darkness.

Fear that prevents us from accepting what is—

and choosing differently.

Fear that stops us from even trying.

I don't say this to feed your fear.

We have more than enough of that already.

I've come to say:

I see what is happening.

And I am choosing to listen—

To my dreams,

To my body,

To my soul.

I say this to awaken—

To give voice to what you already know deep inside:

A message that keeps whispering to you.

A door that's already cracked open.

One that shows you what's coming if we don't change course.

There are still questions we must answer.

And the most important among them are:

How much will we allow to burn before we choose something else?

And what will we build after?

Will we choose the path of destruction again?

Will we desolate our planet—our only home?

Will we annihilate the beauty that still remains?

Or…

Will we choose to grow something different?

Something healthier.

Something alive.

Will we choose to see ourselves as we actually are?

Not separate from nature.

Not separate from each other.

We are not many.

We are one.

No one knows what will happen.

But it is in our hands now—

the choices we make.

The truth of this burns in my lungs as I drive through smoke.

Ash falls like snow through the sky.

Darkness surrounds me—

A nightmare come to life.

And I ask:

How do you keep the darkness out

when it's already inside?

You don't.

You become the light.

That is how we create something new.

By becoming light, illuminated from within.

We can choose a different destiny.

But it begins in the smallest choices we make every single day:

Choosing truth,

even when it's terrifying.

Honoring beauty,

even when it's fleeting.

Recognizing what is sacred,

and choosing to protect it.

Action is the anchor point of faith.

Acting until no more action can be taken.

Then pray.

Sing.

Dance.

Hope.

And rest.

We already hold every ingredient for a new world.

But will we choose to use them?

So this is our task:

See truth.

Confront our shadows.

Accept, integrate, live whole.

Create something real.

Not from fear,

but from Love.

If we can do that,

We can alter our fate,

find our destiny instead.

So become the light.

Because you already are.

Remember?

Behind this piece

About

A poem about collapse, fear, and the possibility that certain endings are not inevitable.

This piece explores my recurring dreams of apocalypse and the uneasy experience of recognizing echoes of those dreams in waking life.

Rather than treating apocalypse as spectacle, it asks what conditions create collapse and what choices create renewal.

At its center is a question:

If fear is one of the dominant forces shaping the world we inhabit now—

what becomes possible when we choose something else?

Insight

For years I treated these dreams symbolically. I assumed they represented internal transformation, personal upheaval, fear of change. And maybe sometimes they did.

But eventually I became uncomfortable with how quickly I dismissed the more obvious possibility:

that part of me was grieving and responding to the world itself.

Not predicting.
Not prophesying.
Just noticing.

Climate grief. Disconnection. Polarization. The strange experience of living in a world where collapse sometimes feels imaginable. Then immediate.

This poem was written from that place. But it is not ultimately about apocalypse. It is about choice.

One of the ideas underneath this piece is that fear is often presented as: practical, intelligent, inevitable.

Yet fear never creates the components of the world I actually want.

Action does.
Connection does.
Truth does.
Love does.

I don't think hope is passive.

I think hope is a practice.

A way of participating in reality as though something beautiful is still possible.

Maybe that is what becoming light means.

Backstory

Parts of this poem began as a voice memo recorded while driving over Wolf Creek Pass through dense wildfire smoke in August of 2025.

I had been staying in Pagosa Springs (a habitual vacation spot since my childhood) for several days.

I drove that valley repeatedly during my trip and each time it felt almost impossibly beautiful—green mountains, open sky, water moving through the valley floor.

Paradise.

But on my last evening I left early because the smoke had become too much for my asthma.

As I drove home, ash drifted through the air and the mountains slowly disappeared into haze. What struck me was not that fire existed.

It was the speed.

Just days earlier this same landscape felt alive in a way that made me ache with gratitude.

Now I felt like I was driving through hell.

That feeling was not entirely new.

Growing up in Colorado Springs, I lived through the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires. Friends lost homes in both. But something about this moment felt different.

For years I had recurring dreams of apocalypse and always treated them symbolically. Then while driving through smoke, I had the uncomfortable realization that part of what those dreams might be expressing was grief.

Not prediction.
Not certainty.
Just recognition.

Recognition that the places we love are changing.

Recognition that we are not separate from those changes.

Recognition that despair asks us to stop caring before the story is finished.

This poem came from trying to answer a different question:

If darkness is already here—

how do we respond?

Details

Author: Bryce George

Kind: poem

Written: 9 March 2026

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