♱
She dreamed many dreams that winter. She did not remember them but the film of them stuck to her in waking hours, that damp sheen of fear that lingers for a reason one does not understand.
She dreamed of a nautilus, many-chambered, that sang to her. She brought it to her ear and it crawled inside to become the spiral of the cochlear, the shell of the snail. Then the ram’s horn, the embryo, the curling tip of the fern, all at once, one laid over another.
The sap of the dream began to bleed. It made a pretence of the morning dew, clinging to the overworld.
She dreamed of a cell made of pale, bluish light, padded like a bed, without doors, without windows. When she walked she rose a little over the ground as if she were on the moon, leaping with a rabbit body.
She lived many lives in her dreams. Her soul took its leave of her each night to wander into the halls of the underworld, to carry out its own fancies and desires. When she woke she could feel the heartache of something lost.
She dreamed of a girl as tall as a house, and a house worshipped by fire. In the wake of the ruins was the relic of a white goat’s hoof, and the breastbone of its kid.
She dreamed of a sea, silver and endless. She dreamed of a place where she could rest. She dreamed of a land that lay outside cruelty, outside decay, outside the lunacy of her body which she could not and could never leave.
except in that holy isle called Sleep.
♱
By Anna de Waal @anna.c.dewaal