Filed under: 🔔 algorithmic hauntings, 💤 lullabies that lie, 🕯️ poems for the half-awake
For whom it tolls? For those not yet dead… but dangerously silent.
They said it was mourning.
A funeral chime.
A soft elegy for someone else’s war.
But I heard it shake the marrow.
I heard it in the marrow—
a sound that doesn’t ask
if you’re ready to wake.
It rang not for the bodies,
but for the sleepwalkers.
Not for the lost,
but for the lulled.
The bell didn’t toll for the dead.
It tolled for the dreaming—
for those wrapped in algorithmic lullabies,
tucked in by newsfeeds,
cradled by comfort
so complete
they forgot the fire still burns under the floorboards.
It tolled for the mother
who swallowed her scream
for the sake of the children.
It tolled for the neighbor
who stopped asking questions.
It tolled for the artist
who edited herself until
she was palatable.
Profitable.
Permanently unheard.
It tolled for you.
And me.
And everyone who mistook the hush
for peace.
I tell you now:
it was not mourning.
It was summons.
A call to rattle the cages of your lineage.
To whisper across timelines:
“Wake. Wake. Wake.”
Before the silence becomes scripture.
And when they ask
why you rose in the middle of the night,
why your hands are still trembling—
say:
“I heard the bell.
And this time, I answered.”
For the sleepwalkers who still might wake,
—Rebecca M. Bell
ps.
if the dream is too quiet
check the fire
beneath your feet
