Joseph wakes to darkness thick as well water, his latest dream dissolving like salt on tongue. The night vision escapes his grasp – something about birds, perhaps, or was it wheat again? His fingers clutch at fragments that slip away like mist through prison bars, leaving only the taste of almost-memory bitter in his throat.
But as this dream fades, his body remembers another – not with the soft edges of sleep, but with the sharp clarity of a wound that never fully heals. It rises through his flesh like fever: the heat of that long-ago fire etching patterns on young skin, the sharp scent of burning wood carrying prophecy skyward. This dream, this first dream that marked him, lives in his marrow with teeth and weight, refusing to fade even after all these seasons of captivity.
His body remembers before his mind catches up: the heat of that long-ago fire etching patterns on young skin, the sharp scent of burning wood carrying prophecy skyward. The prison’s pre-dawn chill presses against his flesh, but another kind of cold spreads from within – the phantom touch of Judah’s scorn still fresh as yesterday’s bruise.
The dream that caused such trouble, the one that earned him those first wounds of isolation, sits in his chest like a swallowed stone. How strange that fleeting night visions slip away like water through cupped hands, while this one dream, this curse-blessing that first marked him different, refuses to release its hold. It pulses beneath his ribs with each heartbeat, overcoming reason and rewriting perception.
Joseph shifts on his pallet, straw crackling beneath him like distant fire. His father’s voice drifts across years: “Let me hear then, Joseph, what is this dream of yours?” The memory carries the weight of prophecy gone wrong, of truth turned bitter on the tongue. Or had it? Even here, stripped of everything but breath and bone-deep certainty, the dream feels more real than the stone walls containing him.
He reaches up into the darkness, fingers spread as if to catch falling stars. The gesture echoes that younger self, trying to grasp divine mysteries with human hands. Pride, yes – there had been too much pride in him then. Judah’s laughter had cut true enough. But beneath the pride had been something else, something that still burns steady as a temple lamp: conviction. Not in himself, but in the One who plants dreams like seeds in mortal soil.
The first hint of dawn seeps through his high window, painting a patch of wall the color of old promises. Joseph watches light gather strength, remembering how the campfire had cast his brother’s face in shadows and gold. “It was the stupidest dream I’ve ever heard of,” Judah had said, kicking sand into flame. Yet here Joseph lies, years later, still cradling that dream like a coal that refuses to cool.
A guard’s footsteps echo down the corridor, marking time’s steady march. But Joseph’s heart beats to an older rhythm – the pulse of prophecy that first seized him that night, when stars wheeled overhead and God’s whispers felt as close as his own breath. The dream remains, outlasting prison walls and brother’s scorn, burning clear as truth in the growing light.
