These Were a Few of the Dreams

These were a few of the images retained:

The final scene is all she remembers.

Massive black horses in water—a marsh, blue sky, angry cumulus darkness roiling in the distance.

They need this, a disembodied voice says. They stand in this water to take the weight off their veiny haunches. It’s therapeutic.

Instantly, she and her horse are a mile out at sea in deep swelling water. The horses swim as if a maelstrom wasn’t upon them—they’re enjoying it—the ocean breaking over their heads.

She isn’t enjoying this—briny fear and seafoam in her nostrils.

And in another instant the sea is drained, there is no tumult, but she is suspended two feet above the seabed, just feet from the old beach line. The marsh is now reedy savanna.

Someone is screaming—bear, bear—in the reeds behind a tall chain-link fence. She has to start her long hike, but she can’t get out of her frozen hover. She can’t move.

These were a few of the dreams. Then she remembers her Shelley. She mutters: 

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day…

This is a bit of the wreckage.

What I’m Reading:

Quite often I talk about being a pacifist, and about how important non-violence is to me, but by virtue of where my tax dollars are being spent, I’m one of the most violent people on earth.

— Omar El Alkad, to Dan Sheehan /“Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West“/ Lithub