My Dreams Are Plotting Against Me

I sink into the bed, lying straight on my back, my arms resting on
each side of my body. It feels like I'm being submerged into deep
ocean water-- but it's just me losing trace of my own thoughts. It
feels like drowning.

The icy waters of the North, they are deceivingly blue but once you're
under, there's only pitch-black. In a dream you don't feel your lungs
filling up with water, you don't feel your breath being snatched away
and you certainly don't feel the cold. You just sink into this
bottomless hole. I had my arms wrapped around my sister, her heart was
pounding, sending sonar signals across the underwater bank. No one
came for us.

I had seaweed tangled around my intestines and worms crawling out my
eye sockets, but I was still holding your hand. You were perfectly
preserved at first glance, but that's why we were blessed with skin.
It's just a defense mechanism-- underneath you were rotting.
Everything that made us human had turned liquid in the ocean and
leaked out our mouths and ears. The rest was eaten by creatures of the
sky when we washed ashore. They cried when they scoped up our remains
in plastic bags, said 'God help us, they never stood a chance.'


--Alexandra Vadarlis