A HANDFUL OF NIGHTMARES


There is a place of tired wakefulness where dreams pass
before your eyes like clouds on a midsummer's day,
where thoughts play music on harpsichords of undiscovered hopes
and reality is just a game played by imagination.
This is the place where mothers speak to their unborn
and children whisper quiet wanderings toward heaven.
Between hushed longing and rememberances
of unrequited tears, bottles of babies appeared.
Six pickle jars lined themselves up for inspection
like soldiers all decked out in their finest. These jars carried
the bodies of children lost
before heaven breathed down their souls.
The bodies huddled themselves in the formaldyhide
like they would have done in their mothers' warm embrace,
and waited for a chance to wail with silent voices.
I watched these jars with their children,
clear glass and urine-colored liquid,
three-inch long forms of birch tree skin,
a few bones, and undevelopped hearts. But in the midst
of noticing their half-made carcasses, I noticed they had hands.
I noticed that their hands were no different than those
of Michelangelo, Einstein, the mayor, my teacher, my mother,
mine. They could have been the hands of anyone,
but instead they belong to no one. And all they can do is sit
on a shelf inside my memory and wait until life redeems them.