Oneirophobia: intense fear of dreams or what they may mean.
Last night
I think I dreamt of cancer.
I dreamt of my bones emptying onto the floor,
like they were cups this whole time
just waiting for someone to come drink up my soul.
They tipped like fountains
like waterfalls, like the trickles of water
down someone’s face in the rain
and they pooled round my feet,
cold as winter.
I froze to the floor and they pumped full my hollow self
with things to hide; secrets
and names and people that everyone else forgot.
Sometimes I forget how cold sunlight can be,
but was reminded as I dug through the snow
for my heart, wondering where it lay:
in San Francisco, in my chest, somewhere in the back of my head--
somewhere I hadn’t found yet.
They took that too, eventually, and told each pulse secrets
it wasn’t allowed to tell the rest of me.
How to forget, like everyone else--
how to forgive, in a broken kind of way.
How to not care at all.
Last night I dreamt of moths flitting through my bones,
great gaping caverns of parts of me that disappeared.
I dreamt that I died like an elderly woman,
frail and withered as a willow tree,
skin thin as ice.
I didn’t dream of pretty things, last night.
Last night I dreamed of dying, and
in the morning, I looked in the mirror,
wondering where my glass skin had gone.
