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i: prologue
i dream my mother’s dream. it starts with a little swift flying west, pulling the sea behind her. the sky is in my palms, its birds in my throat. i know the words but i do not have my mother’s tongue, so i can only witness.
ii: carrying water
a spill means i run out of a father. his red and white striped shirt more red than white. the stripes almost invisible. maybe imagined. maybe only an attempt to scatter the dream before it tastes his blood. the shirt, and its red and white stripes, is how i imagined an inside-out zebra; drinking from a bleeding lake. if the dream spills then we do not get to the stitches at the back of his head the next noon. then him, in an unstained grey t-shirt, mornings later, laughing on the phone. then him, now grey, sitting behind the house, laughing on the phone. the dreams i dream will be without the disintegration of the polyphony: dripping blood, cracking bone. the bass is identical, the tenor a whisper in one, a scream in the other.
iii: fontanelle
i dream my mother’s dream. in it is a child still wet with the womb. right before her eyes, a blade touches her mother. the second time she bled for me, i am wrapped in white cloth and the scent of my mother’s milk. the roof is cut open, the cold night falls into the room, like a child placing its head on its mother’s bosom. then open skin, then red. a blade slices her thigh. she screams like an owl burying its chick in its throat. eyes don’t just water when witnessing a miracle. sometimes it is sorrow, sometimes it is a body failing. other times, it is blood finding a forgotten opening in the body. then it rushes out, searching for honey and rust.
iv: epilogue
in the mornings, my mother says, “sleep in your body, you’re haunting the past.” then the sun breaks the sky. its red/black becomes red/yellow. some colours are forgiving, others are not.
