The silence after prophecy falls like evening dew – cold, inevitable, saturating. Joseph presses his forehead against the damp prison wall, stone drinking the fever from his skin. “This faith will be my undoing,” he whispers, words catching in his throat like trapped birds, “unless…” The darkness swallows the rest of his prayer.
Moments ago, divine presence had coursed through him like spring water through desert clay, shaping meanings from the cupbearer’s dreams. Then – absence. As if someone had again torn away his cloak, leaving him defenseless before his doubts, each whispered truth now seeming fragile as a child’s boast. His chest aches with the familiar shame – this aftermath of inspiration when silence fills the space where God’s voice had been.


Joseph’s fingers trace the wall’s roughness, searching for anchor. One more night to wait. “Was it truly your voice I heard?” The prison air hangs thick with the breath of other captives, their snores and whimpers painting the darkness. A fly buzzes past his ear – even it has more freedom than he does. In the next cell, someone screams, brief and hollow, like a dream shattering.
Memory floods his senses without warning: sunlight spilling over Canaan’s hills, herbs crushing beneath his feet releasing their fragrance to heaven. His brothers’ silhouettes sharp against the morning sky. Joseph lifts his hand in greeting, his spirit soaring toward the light like a young eagle testing its wings in the sun’s playground. But their faces remain turned away, and the wind carries their whisper: “Here comes the dreamer.”

The words still carry their sting, but something deeper pulses beneath the old wound – a rhythm of promise, steady as a heartbeat. Dreams. Always dreams. They led him here, stripped him bare, buried him in this tomb of stone and shadow. Yet even now, they burn in his blood like stars that refuse to die.
How many times has he been stripped? Of coat, of freedom, of dignity. But these dreams – they cling to his bones, impossible to tear away. In the suffocating dark, Joseph stretches out his arms, making an offering of his emptiness. Sometimes faith is nothing more than this: standing naked before mystery, bearing witness to what the heart knows but cannot prove.