Dreams of Aberdeen
By Anita Markoff
I wake up. Another liquid dream, I can taste the oil in my mouth this time
I change the stained sheets. The Haar, the North, this City,
always creeping up around me in my sleep,
sinking in, heavy, another sea
it is impossible to rise from.
“When did the nightmares begin” she asks me and I honestly
don’t remember, “I think when he left me” but that sounds so
disconnected from reality, I do not dream of you, not ever.
I dream of dying plants, and fear filled pregnancies, and
my little sister (now seventeen) a child again
only no one can see her tiny hands but me
and although familiar she is somehow eerie
like the children in the Shining
and waking up with paint leaking from me,
on my walls, my hands
but when I say I don’t know how it got there, they call me crazy.
I have told her before there is something about this city that weighs on me
maybe the texture of oil on my tongue, black and curling
it seeps into my morning tea
rising out of the bathtub dripping
tasting of salt.
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