It's Still Life

A Time for Dreaming

I’m doing that breathing thingy where you breathe into yourself, helps you sleep in this heat, which has traveled over half a dozen foreign tongues. This sort of heat could sink a boat. And right before I drop into deep sleep, I dream that I pull down the loft ladder, and toss Sedrick, he’s a teddy bear my mum made me when I was 3, up into the dark loft for safe keeping because the grandkids are coming for a month-long visit in July, and I don’t want them doing what I did to my nana’s doll – took lipstick and prettied up the doll’s face, and Nana insisted that I get a spanking, which I got and still remember, and then I had to write a letter apologising for defacing Nana’s favourite doll. Mum, how do you spell sorry, and she tells me to sound it out, so I write something like sa.rr.ree. And then I jolt awake, realise I hadn’t put Sedrick in the loft, and that guilt isn’t restrained by time, but thank god at least I know how spell sorry.

we bump into mountains
and the sounds of broken homes
and the air is dust

Written for Donna’s Wednesday Haibun at GoDogGo, and MTB for dVerse Poets . ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting and @godoggocafe on Twitter. Image Goya’s Ridiculous Dream