Dragons ~~ anna hood ~~


Once again I dream:
I am six curled up beside my sister
tucked tight under the eaves
of our little gingerbread
house.
Outside the moon
her bones, eyes and wings
her polished face
embroidered onto the gentle black
cloak of night spills
over the sill splashes silver
my sister’s hair
tints her eyelids mauve pale.

They flutter
hiding her green eyes,
bright as bird song.
Green as spring
my mother used to say
or liquid Palmolive soap
or new lettuce or the wine bottles
in her paintings or my sister’s eyes.

My eyes are grey
the pupils outlined in black
like a funeral notice
like rainy mornings, like
shingle houses on a stormy Cape
Cod, grey as the owl who takes me
to the scary dreamland I visit.
My mother never painted my eyes
too drab perhaps for her
paintbox of brilliance
My mother never painted me
a green eyed dragon.

As her dreams take her
slipping sliding
between realities
my sister’s mouth curves
into the technicolour world
she visits each night
the vein on her neck
thin as blue silk thread
pulses her breath a ghost of wind.
She’s gathered into a ball
in her favourite Snoopy
nightie shapeless as an amoeba.
Curtains of blonde hair
the colour stolen
from a January sun
ice the pillow.

I want to siphon them
away, those dreams
take them for my own
enter her cotton candy world
my own mouth curving up
into my sister’s eyes
into my mother’s paintings.
But no. I’m down here alone
in my black and white dreams
where the only bright thing
is my sister’s green eyes.

I am tired of these dreams
tired of writing poems
about dead friends
and lovers.
I’m tired of winter.