I’m in the dream again: not the one I had while awake in
the catacombs of St. Callixtus in Rome. Where the darkness was
so impenetrable that it began to echo. To look like the mixture of colors
that burst when you rub your eyes too hard for too long. Like the
neuron rupture before death. To shape and morph and become liquid.
Where the darkness cobbled itself into a physical form.
Not the dream where I kept seeing
flits of my mother out of the corner of my eye. Behind
every street corner.
Every turn. Every tunnel.
Reflected in the casts of the bodies in Pompeii.
Mirrored in the waves of the Trevi Fountain.
I’m in the dream where the soil churned from the bottom to the top.
where the hand outstretched from the grave.
where my grandfather clawed his way out and returned to my grandmother﹘sopping wet, covered in thick mud, socks torn, skin sallow and jaundiced, spitting out the wire the embalmers put in his mouth, melting makeup, and ravenously hungry. And it’s been so
long since he was hungry.
“He came back to me, Taylor,” my grandmother tells me.
“He came back to me.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that he’s undead.
I’m physically unable to spit out those words.
And it’s a dream and it’s a dream and it’s a dream, but
it just fits so perfectly. That he would come back to her.
That death would not be a barrier. I can’t explain it. It just is.
My grandmother is a shell without him.
The body that’s missing the limb.
The body that keeps score.
Jun 13, 2021
Jun 13, 2021 at 11:36 PM UTC
I’m in the dream again: not the one I had while awake in
the catacombs of St. Callixtus in Rome. Where the darkness was
so impenetrable that it began to echo. To look like the mixture of colors
that burst when you rub your eyes too hard for too long. Like the
neuron rupture before death. To shape and morph and become liquid.
Where the darkness cobbled itself into a physical form.
Not the dream where I kept seeing
flits of my mother out of the corner of my eye. Behind
every street corner.
Every turn. Every tunnel.
Reflected in the casts of the bodies in Pompeii.
Mirrored in the waves of the Trevi Fountain.
I’m in the dream where the soil churned from the bottom to the top.
where the hand outstretched from the grave.
where my grandfather clawed his way out and returned to my grandmother﹘sopping wet, covered in thick mud, socks torn, skin sallow and jaundiced, spitting out the wire the embalmers put in his mouth, melting makeup, and ravenously hungry. And it’s been so
long since he was hungry.
“He came back to me, Taylor,” my grandmother tells me.
“He came back to me.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that he’s undead.
I’m physically unable to spit out those words.
And it’s a dream and it’s a dream and it’s a dream, but
it just fits so perfectly. That he would come back to her.
That death would not be a barrier. I can’t explain it. It just is.
My grandmother is a shell without him.
The body that’s missing the limb.
The body that keeps score.
write your grief prompt 10: amorphous prompt
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