qarrtsiluni

“The Big Blue Church,” by Ian Jones

*

First Dream

There is no figure to relate
to myself, but I am drawn

up the church’s yellow path,
past the mud-colored and disproportioned

tree, over the flat expanse
of coral earth, to stand before

the church’s lowest window.
Square and straight, it is unlike

the others, too close to the foundation
for any but a child

to look through it. I look
through it without bending.

I have become very small,
small as in the first dream

I remember: standing in a tall crowd,
faces lost in darkness over me,

the hood of my winter coat—
the same pale blue as the mountains

in the painting—pulled up around my face.
The dream girl and the girl

I have become stare at each other
through the blurry lowest window

of the blue church. The door
of the church has no handles.

It opens only from the inside.

by Amy Watkins of Rossism