Dreams by Jennifer Williams

Dreams

by Jennifer Williams

Dreams are palpable things these days.

I can touch them, just in from of me,

I sleep close to them at night,

twirl them around my fingers during the day.

Perhaps I'll find money

or fame

or love,

right at my fingertips.

With the others of my generation

I step

into the place my ancestry have left open for me,

into their places, determined

to do better than they.

My mother who once held my tiny form, counted my transparent toes and

fingers—

which would later curl around her longer ones to be led

through a busy street, a grown-up world—

now dwarfed by her daughter,

words in my shadow,

behind me.

She, who once in my place held the world stretched

out before her,

now stepping back,

puts away my clothes,

washes my dishes,

putting the life she hasn't finished earning,

toward mine.

And I, ignorant, not knowing, not realizing,

that the dream at her fingertips,

is me.