The Dream of Past, Present, and Future, Shishi Shomloo

The Dream Of Past, Present, and Future

I dreamt that I was sitting in my kitchen with the big windows and the gingham tablecloth that I’ll own that you’ll make fun of and I am drinking in the color of your skin with two sugar cubes the color of your teeth. And then you walk in and oh my god what do you mean your concealer doesn’t match the skin on your neck we’re going to your parents’ house tonight they can’t see that. You blushed the way you will and we’ll laugh as we go and get you a scarf because thankfully it will be cold so you can wear a scarf and you can borrow my scarf. And we’ll walk down to that river with the leaves falling on us like a preview to the snow that will eventually come because our house will be secluded an– wait no no not that river any river but that river and suddenly I am the river and I am looking up at you and I see you walking right on the edge (“you’re gonna fall into the water”) and I see the rocks give away as if they were bowing to a queen and you are falling – no, you are floating – in the air and then I am surrounding you the way I did and I am coursing through your veins and in your heart (thumpthump. thumpthump.) I see you in the negative space of my fingers, flitting by like a distant memory (do you remember how we met?) and then you are gone, (gone, gone) the way you were gone, the way you are gone, the way you will be gone. You are past, present, and future and you are sleeping on the riverbed, the bruises that the river left you – that I – left you, covering you like miserable kisses in my coffee cup.

Shishi Shomloo ’15

14 Pillars of Salt