Image by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
When I was five or six years old
I dreamed I saw a man in a yellow rain slicker
His broken body lying on the side of Coronado Parkway
Having been hit by a car.
I asked my mother if the man was dead.
She said simply, yes.
I watched emergency workers load his body on a stretcher.
They covered his face with a sheet.
My mother took my hand and said, "Come on."
She led me away from the scene.
I watched my mother and me walk away,
Shadows strolling towards the rising sun.
notes
Here is the prompt I played free and loose with.
The prompt asked participants if they'd ever had a dream where they died and suggested we describe said dream in a nocturne.
I've had plenty of dreams where I died. The dreams in which I'm dying are not the best I've ever had; in fact, they're usually quite traumatic. However, the dreams where I'm among the dead (spirits, not corpses) are usually quite pleasant.
Instead of describing a dream where I died, I chose to describe a strikingly vivid dream I had when I was very young. I had never in my life (at least not in this life) seen anything like the scene I described. I often had deep, disturbing, vivid dreams at that age which seemed rather out of context for one so young.
At some points in my life, I've behaved in an immature fashion, but I've often described myself as never having been a child. I was forced to grow up at a very young age. Some of my behaviors may have seemed childish, but they were coping mechanisms. Some of them were bizarre and ritualistic.
I've always had an absurdist sense of humor, but I've never been light-hearted.
I learned to read when I was four years old and graduated from Dr. Seuss to Edgar Allan Poe by the time I was six. I felt like Poe got me.
I found solace in writing. At six years old, I wrote such bangers as Bruce the Fish and a poem called The Old Lady Who Sat In A Chair. Bruce was a surprisingly cheerful character coming from the mind of a kid who read Poe. He was a kind-hearted fellow always ready to lend a hand to help a friend. The Old Lady Who Sat In A Chair won a first prize ribbon at the New Mexico State Fair.
I'm not sure if this poem qualifies as a nocturne as the scene in question takes place just before dawn and ends at sunrise. It's either an end-of-the-night nocturne or just a free verse poem about a gloomy little girl's grim dream. Your choice, I really don't care either way.
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
--Christina Rossetti, Echo
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
I was nowhere near as fetching a child as this delightful little sprite (I've always been breathtakingly ugly, to be honest) and I didn't live by the ocean (I've always lived in land-locked places) but I think this image captures the imaginative spark in my grim little head. Despite all my complexities, my fondest desire is simple. I've always wished that everyone could just be happy and live in peace.
Simple doesn't always mean possible, I'm afraid.
