I dream about running. About hiding away from something that doesn’t make its intentions clear as it looms in my peripheral, hatchet scraping the flooring of my aunt’s decaying home painted pink to hide the rot crawling from in between the walls. I wonder if the fact that it chases me is the first gun shot signaling that it isn’t safe for me to stand out in the open, that I can no longer sit at the dinner table — that I have to escape as it bolts right after me. 

I dream about running. About being gifted and presented everything I had once thought about before blowing out the candles, biting more than I can chew; only left with a rope of smoke from the last blow. The last tick of the clock, the sword pointing at twelve to reset everything for me to live through. Again, I run. Again. It doesn’t matter how far I think I’ve escaped. It closes the distance. It follows.

I dream about hiding. From the monster that wears my face, my clothes, my tears. It mimics me. The other side of a butterfly’s wings. Has this world always been just a maze of mirrors? I no longer recognize which face is reflected back in the gleaming blade of the hatchet, in the muddied up puddle underneath my feet as I push myself against the door that refuses to fully close shut as the tide comes after me.

It’s a never ending chase that bruises my lungs blue, and calcifies the body that I don’t recognize every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I stumble through the familiar road lined with empty houses. No one in sight. Again, I’m alone. Again. 

Within the lake’s belly, it’s dark, the sky slick and ebony deep, learning to trust my hands rather than my sight — is this the price to pay for making wishes? I grasp for fabric, for the edge of my mother’s night gown that I can never seem to hold onto, my fingers curling around the noose that hovers over me wherever I turn, in the attic, in the garden where I’ve buried the monster’s body.

I dream about starving. I dream about never allowing the seams of my dress to drag against the mud, to get caught in the current, to let myself choose between burying myself alive or getting eaten. 

Because the flood is the monster—
and the monster is my mother
and my mother is my body
floating in the water.

I dream about wondering. Why I have to hold onto something that reeks of death in order to preserve my existence. Within these distant familiar halls, the tiles under my feet are cold, and the stairs have steep steps that prevent me from escaping. The building protrudes from the ground, like a needle lurking. Waiting to be stepped on. To taste the first bite of rust until it spreads. Again, I run. Again.

It doesn’t matter how far I think I’ve escaped. It closes the distance. The prophecy follows.