Sketch of a Woman Dreaming

~Joanna Vance She is afraid of the rising moon, shrinking from its searchlight which moves within the universe at an unfathomable speed, and then settles on her skin. Sometimes she dances, or throws her body onto long grasses, levitating above each blade’s insistency. And the wind, when it moves her to leap, loosens her worries; she falls asleep. Dreams come parading in the form of diminutively shaped hopes: He boards the airplane, it shudders into sky, and, later, finds her walking home. He pleads for mercy on knees that once allowed him to swagger. For it was a February day (now she is covered in a darkening room – light is blue, light is grey) and she had not loved, but she was pressed to the edge, that month, when he was the knife. Receding from reach, an elusive phantom and she startles, lights the lamp: The glow focuses on her face. Not on the black-eyed night or the thousands of birds that fly into the room, crying.