Unprepared

                the place you fell down from

  was the air so pure up there

                                that before you could warn me I

might find you

                  in the rustling of the trees  

you lost your breath

                and I was trapped

             under this avalanche of 

leaves        

                               

Wisdom lost

And nothing is more obvious to
my existence than this raging
internal war,
who is fighting and who is winning,
irrelevant so far.

Misplaced

Dream Journal, February 2, 2005

Had a dream that I went with two people to my grandparents’ house.  The house was empty; we were just checking up on it.  Everyone who lived there had disappeared, except for my grandfather, who we knew had died.  Although the door to the living room was supposed to be closed, a little dog with us ran out of the room and down to the basement.  We went to the basement door and called for the dog.  As he came back up the stairs, a young woman followed him.

Well, I nearly had a heart attack.  She had been one of the missing people we’d assumed was dead--other than that I didn’t know exactly who she was.  I asked her where she’d been. She said she didn’t know, only that she'd been gone for three years.  Whoever had taken her had arranged for her life upon her return.  She had a strange air of contentment about the fact that she’d lost three years of her life.

She told us she intended to stay in the house.  I was scared and I wanted to leave, so she told me to call her whenever I needed her, which didn’t seem very likely.  Other people were staying with her at the house, although I could just see some shadows hovering around her. 

Only then did I realize that everyone who had disappeared were members of my family, not just random people.  Terror overcame me that whoever was taking them would come for me, too, and I didn’t want that.  I didn’t want to disappear and not know what happened to me for such a long stretch of time. 

When I woke up it was the middle of the night and I felt very, very afraid.  I thought to myself that maybe I didn’t want to remember after all.  I didn’t feel so brave anymore.

After that I had another dream.  In it is someone whispered to me, “Be quiet, Megan,” as if they were right in bed next to me.  I woke up with a start.  

Not a good night.

Dry

you want to cry

but you have been dry for so long

that despair has cut a dirt rock river

through the canyons of 

your lungs

Unraveling

With an anxious sigh, Polly Wiggle-Waggle scanned her family’s account books, looking for good news that simply was not there.  Poor Polly was running out of ideas.  Try as she might to persuade them otherwise, her parents refused to admit that the family was in a financial crisis.  “The Wiggle-Waggles,” her father had intoned, after Polly waved the account books under his nose, “do not have financial crises!” 

If only that were true.  Yes, Lord and Lady Wiggle-Waggle, Polly’s parents, still lived in the great manor that had been the family seat for the last 37 generations.  And yes, they still gave the most glamorous garden parties in the county.  But with the family’s income drying up, and her parents’ complete inability to grasp reality, Polly was at her wits’ end for ways to raise funds for the summer fete her mother insisted on hosting.

In desperation Polly looked around the living room, searching for an old vase or painting her parents wouldn’t miss if she pawned it off a London antiques shop.  It was, she knew, a hopeless cause.  Thanks to such raids in the past Polly’s parents were beginning to notice that the manor seemed a bit emptier than usual, even though it was still crammed full of family heirlooms.  

And of course Polly could forget about suggesting to her father that he get a job.  Lord Wiggle-Waggle’s face had gone beet red the last time she’d dared to raise the subject. “The Wiggle-Waggles,” he’d boomed, “do not have jobs!”  Nor had Lady Wiggle-Waggle been of much help when Polly had approached her after dinner yesterday.  “Darling,” she’d sniffed to Polly, “how many times do I have to tell you?  It’s vulgar for a lady to discuss matters of finance!”

Polly just did not know what to do.  With her brother Alfred even more clueless than her parents—he was incapable of any conversation not concerning lawn tennis or his London gentleman’s club—Polly felt utterly alone.  If only she could think of a way to make some money…

Happily Ever After

Time to sharpen the needle of this thorn

to watch the destruction of

what I never knew to be true

The volcano erupted underneath the trees

I felt it 

I felt it as I expanded and shrank and dissolved

into the nothing I pretended

was you.

Atomic pain

you found my horses runnning bare

shivering in the wind with

frozen hair

it broke to the touch 

as you whispered goodbye goodbye

goodbye...