Phrase Prompt, Prose, Prosery, Theme Prompt, Writing Challenge, Writing Prompts

Dreams From An Unfinished Mind

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for dVerse Prosery – “Tribute to
Gordon Downie”. Our host, Mish, asks us
to write a piece of prose using this line
from Downie’s poem, “Starpainters”:

“The Starpainters are taking over now.”

Image by Me & Gemini

The light through the curtains had gone soft and gold, the way it does just before sleep pulls you under. I lay there wishing on nothing in particular…. just wishing, the way children do, believing the wanting itself might be enough.

And maybe it was because somewhere behind my eyes the ceiling dissolved into a hush of indigo, and small quiet figures began climbing down invisible ladders, dipping their brushes into jars of scattered light. They moved without hurry, touching color to the corners of the room, to the edges of thoughts I hadn’t finished having.

I didn’t ask who they were; I already knew, the way you know things in dreams.

The Starpainters are taking over now, I thought, and let my eyes close all the way.

They’d have the whole sky repainted by morning. I only had to keep wishing until then.

NAR©2026

This is “Bobcaygeon” by Tragically Hip (Gordon Downie, lead vocalist)

Prosery: Tribute to Gordon Downie

Everything on the elephant trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicate, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

21 thoughts on “Dreams From An Unfinished Mind”

  4. Nice story, Nancy.  Incomplete tasks create an internal pressure that demands mental resources.  Early humans relied on tracking unfinished dangers or goals to stay alive, making the brain intolerant of ambiguity.  Your memory automatically highlights unfulfilled goals over finished ones, making them pop up when you try to relax.  In psychology, the unfinished mind is called the Zeigarnik Effect, after the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who first described it in the 1920s.  She was sitting in a café in Vienna when she noticed that the waiters remembered unpaid orders perfectly, but once a bill was settled, they forgot the details almost instantly.

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