The first line of "Nightmare" is a promise, and the rest of the poem spends itself breaking it. "You tell you self you never have to face things alone" sounds like the reassurance people repeat in the dark. Then comes the swerve of "But here you are standing, staring." Nobody else is in the scene, and the poem never says what the darkness is or what is chasing the dreamer. What it gives us instead is a body in panic. Its central idea seems to be that fear isolates, and that the comfort we rehearse in daylight does not survive contact with the real thing.
The split in "you self" is probably a slip for "yourself," but it works. The line reads as two figures, a "you" and a "self," one talking the other into courage. That doubleness suits the second-person voice that runs through the whole poem. There is never an "I." The speaker may be addressing themselves from a safe distance, and the reader is pulled into the dreamer's place without being asked. No one watches this nightmare from outside.
The imagery stays close to the body: glazed eyes, tears, a racing heart, a rising chest. "Dirt all on your clothes and face" is the most quietly revealing detail. It suggests that the running, and perhaps an earlier fall, began before the poem did, so we arrive in the middle of something. The word "face" is also worth watching. It is a verb in line one, where you are told you will never have to "face things," and then a noun twice, as the tears and dirt streak the face itself. Read this way, the body gives away what the self-reassurance tried to hide. The phrase "tears falling from your eyes and face" is a little loose, since tears fall from the eyes. In context, though, the blur feels like overflow, as if the description can't hold still either.
The form does much of the frightening. There is no rhyme, no stanza break and almost no punctuation, so the reader has nowhere to pause. After the long first line, the lines shorten and tighten like breath. Present participles pile up: staring, glazing, falling, running, closing, rising. They keep the action in an unfinished present where nothing resolves. "Faster and faster" appears twice, first for the heart and then for the chest, and the second time the poem itself seems to accelerate. "Falling and falling" does the same thing in miniature, looping back on itself as the dreamer drops.
The poem's logic is that of a dream. "Each step only takes you farther back" is a paradox: running should create distance, but here effort produces regression. "Walls closing in" has no verb, so the squeeze never begins or ends. It simply is. Then "You scream but no one hears you" answers the opening line directly. The promise of never being alone is tested and fails. Even the escape route is withheld, because "Running toward the door / You fall and stumble" never gets to the door.
The ending is the flattest line in the poem: "Then it's over." The title leads us to expect waking, but there is no gasp and no "I woke." The line could mean the dream has ended, or it could mean something darker. The poem doesn't say, and that refusal leaves the reader in the gap between the two.
Judging by the imagery, the poem can be read as more than a bad dream. A pounding heart, a tight chest, shrinking walls and an unheard scream are also the language of panic and anxiety, though the text never names either. Because the darkness is left unnamed, readers can fill it with their own fears. Plain words, repetition and missing punctuation are enough to make a feeling physical, which is why the poem is worth reading closely despite its brevity.