Freud’s Ribbon

I've had the same dream,

almost weekly,

since I was eight years old.

In it, I notice something stuck

to the tip of my middle finger.

I try to pull it off, but it is

my skin.

It unravels, like a pulling a

sweater string, up my arm

across my chest, up my neck

around my face and down

my side, between then down

my legs, back up again, uncoiling

unspooling like a thread

until a pile of pink bloody

candy floss is piled at my feet.

I can feel the nerves shredding,

the cold air against what is now exposed.

       Once, I woke up and my arm

       was covered in blood from the elbow

       to the wrist, my bedsheet red and saturated;

       I had dug trenches on the white

       underbelly of my forearm

       in my sleep.

Now, I wake up tingling all over

and barely give it a single thought

anymore; why do I still

have this dream? Why does it not

terrify me anymore?

Even in dreams, you can get used

to anything. If anything is terrifying,

why isn't it that?