This is just a story.

In this dream,
I am standing on a graying prairie in autumn, the air is filled with the moans of flora morning their ephemeral charms.
I am attempting to find myself.
I stand with a thin silvery rope clenched in my hands, pulled tight by unseen forces straining against it in the distance.
I haul myself forward, one arms length at a time, but with each gain on the rope, I feel the air compress into a razor and my skin splits against its pressure.
I keep reining in the rope; my limbs grow textured with red stinging gashes, meticulous and in a grid pattern. My thighs are waffles.
Finally, I spot my tug of war partner at the end of the rope. It is a magnificent grey ostrich, regal and shimmering. This bird is what I’ve been missing, the piece of myself that’s run wild, the piece I need to tame, no, not tame…but exist with, touch. I need to know that it is real, that it exists underneath my fingers. I need to merge with this feeling.

I am close enough to stroke the aging feathers, to see the black marble eye searching my face. We stand quietly trembling, together as a pair in the heart of a dying landscape.

The ostrich whips its head back and runs, the rope rasps across my hands, dying itself red and wet.

My stomach is slumping out my feet. At certain angles around my knees it catches, sticking slightly, like oatmeal.
All I have to say is ouch.

I watch the bird disappear into the horizon again and I wonder if I have enough skin left to do it all over again.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 3:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Night Terrors:

In this dream
I am standing in a room extending endlessly in all directions, strung with draping white fabric and exuding the faint smell of latex.

I turn and in the midst of this blank oasis is a blond baby, sitting and staring. Her hair floats against her skull like wisps of cotton and her skin is too pink, raw, like the shiny flesh under a scab.

I blink and the whites of my eye seize the chance to suck my irises back into my eye sockets. Like a trampoline, they pop back with a squeak and I see that this little girl is no baby.

She is a massive swarm of baby mice, blind and raw pink skinned. The swarm pours over the ground like a tidal wave inside a glass of spilling water. The clicks of tiny teeth echo the sounds of hunger. My skin itches in anticipation.
Is this a nature video?
I’m not quite sure I understand the metaphor

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In this dream
I am riding alone on a motorbike through a construction zone at purple dusk.

The street lamps and car lights are glowing fire orbs, floating like fuzzy cotton balls. I am navigating in-between roadblocks and street rubble and my hands are shaking. My bike shudders and wobbles with each breath I take.

The wind buzzes against my face as I pass under a bridge and I careen through a red light. The stop light is the sun, which sets under bridges in the Midwest. No wonder the air is purple.

Emerging from the hot light I am snagged by a small series of rubber balls. These are police lights, and they bounce like tin cans trailing behind me. I hit my brakes and fall to the side, bringing the bike down on top of me. I curl underneath it and weep into the asphalt with relief. I wasn’t headed anywhere pleasant.

The police officer is wearing construction boots and has flowers in his hair. He pulls me to my feet and positions himself behind me talking in a light and pleasant tone, only I can’t understand anything he says. The words are out of order, like beads strung on a necklace.

His tone is so kind, perhaps he doesn’t understand that I don’t want his hands on my thighs or his face in my neck.
But we share no common language, he can’t hear my repeated “No.�

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What she meant to say:

Like a well know song
You slip into my heart.
But lower,
Hanging like a sock filled with water.

Forgive my porous nature,
But I sweat you.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 3:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)