Inspired by a dream or perhaps a nightmare...

You come leading a flock
so I know you will not be staying.
Wearing appendages
you sweep and wash and scour,

while I wake in an upstairs bedroom, alone
white silent walls meet closed doors,
glaring bruises freshly dress
sunlit parts of fleshy pallor.

Yet, I am unaware of their origin.
Only sorrow and tears and worry and loss
are the curiosities of mystery plundering
my troubled mind;

an arm here, a leg there, such dreams!
Things in china that should
be carried upon shoulders,
not in wet ceramic bowls.

Beneath the tunnel we fled.
Not many emerged.
Finding myself hidden under a blanket of snow,
in the cold I strained to see the two of you

Had been left behind…

© 2002 Victoria Valentine
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