Cannon Roxanne Crawford-Wilson

In This Dream

Cannon Roxanne Crawford-Wilson

In this dream, I am under a lemon tree in the backyard, tracing fingers across small spines that wander my ground while the other hand idles, caressing sun-tickled grass Above me, mirrors hang by thin pink string, twirling gently, the weight of their white porcelain backings effortlessly swaying by a gust through the pines

In this dream, the world loves me back and crocuses reach up to whisper into my hair, taking my face into their tiny hands, and everything is easy. Everything is easy like looking for the moon staring into the night cloudless

Milky white fingers under bathwater calloused and ringless, scrubbing the little girl who is much too tiny to be seven Her back licked by thorns where she had met the forest in an embrace seduced by its soft touch

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fleeing the white shutter house where birds come to land on decomposing back porch on doghouse strangled by ivy the birds sing “this home has left”

In this dream, I thank my mama for the backyard a place to run and fall on all the days I shrugged off my boots kicked aside lost thimbles and doll limbs, retreating to the mint patch my father would rip up when I was in the fourth grade, or to sniff the lacy cuffs of foxglove that killed the neighbor's cat

I live beside twilight and concrete walls, thick and viscous, The albatross bricked in a reminder of the weight yet trembling under an atom of touch Memories are only real if a ringing sounds in my ears bad habits in my blood twist and writhe falling apart becomes the only thing left

When I look up, I see only dust a swirling scythe forming

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slicing through the vision I had of trust

I live under mirrors strung up by deceit and cracked porcelain and white shutters

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