Somnium Malum

Vision of my mother

Walking, half stilted, hand on hip and gluteals

Dry coughing, like whooping cough, the action not the sound. She's not concerned.

The cough is helping her breathe. It's when she doesn't cough, when she feels the desert in the canyon of her throat (you can hear the wind)... It's choking her like the absence

of a thousand seas and too many discordant voices. She sees me and begins to say

"Silent watcher, dreading child, my cough is the first mournful gape of my reaching mouth.

I will swallow you and bury you with your fears.

When you resurrect you will place your hand on your hip, you will cough on wind.

Cover your cough, a lady is polite, choke on your mother's silt, sifting souls"

She wanders away

No emotion just poison

And dead wind.