A Dream, Disclosed

I slept without rest. My hands trembling, I

brought a water glass to my lips. It was

many years ago when the nighttime held

so much more than stars, when the sun filtered

through my window, overcoming the moon

but unable to dispel the haze of

an uneasy dream.

The wash of years cannot erode that which

breaks through the deepest parts of ourselves. A

dream relived is simply a life. When years

pass and the dream remains it becomes a

weight to bear, a truth to disclose.

On my thirtieth birthday I went to

visit my mother. In her kitchen I told

her the dream–

I'm at a grand ball on a promenade

held up by a double marble staircase

at my old school, with dozens of people

in gowns and tuxes dancing and eating

to the strains of an orchestra–

and I'm there, carrying a palate with

an accomplice I do not know, going

to people one by one, and watching them

convulse as we standby,

and they collapse dead, and we catch them with

the pyre, and we carry them off to

I-know-not-where–

and then I’m in the trauma room where I

first watched a patient die years ago, and

a figure wrapped in white cloth lies on the

table, like she was when I ushered in

her loved ones to see her, and alarm lights

are flashing and a name strobes on a screen–

…I do not know this name.

My mother fell grave and started to weep.

She knew the name, but in silence she quaked.

She would not tell me about the person

whose name invaded my mind. My dream

disclosed is now a dream foreclosed and here

I stand in that same uneasy dream, now

ready for a light greater than the sun

to shine upon my sleeping face, and to

dispel, once and for all, the question that

haunts me more than a vision of death.