Song for Night

Dreaming Is Hands Held in Prayer over the Nose

Maybe this is true. That there are some of us who give love and some of us who take love; and that those who give can’t help giving just as those who take can’t help taking; and maybe this is what holds the world in balance.

I dream my hate comes back and she is a woman made of night dancing in the middle of a lake I have seen only in Grandfather’s stories and she has claws of fire and breath of ice and her laughter, as she turns in dance, is a band tight as a vice across my heart choking life from it, and as I am gasping for breath all I can think is, What a thing of beauty she is, what a thing. Then a light breaks in the east, over the lake, and approaches, an orb smaller than a star but no less bright. I see it is Ijeoma and she opens her arms and the woman made of my hate fills her, slowly extinguishing her light, and she falls from the sky, and as she falls, her light fading, the band around my chest loosens and I see her smile so sadly yet so full of love.

I wake to darkness. Breathing heavily I fumble for a cigarette and stick one in my mouth. In a fleeting kind of way, I wonder how come this pack never seems to run out, but then a deeper thought takes hold.

I need to find that town and my platoon.

I want to say a prayer for Ijeoma, but I feel silly. It is only a dream. I shake it off and head back to the road. In the dark it looks like it might lead to the underworld.

Shit.