i.
i dreamt my mother was taken from me to fulfill my terror.
the room was white, and she came back to me in -red-
and she sat beside me with her same face and smiled,
and she stroked my hair
in a away i don’t remember my mother ever doing.
i didn’t close my eyes.
why was it so easy to pretend that
nothing was wrong?
 
ii.
i dreamt a monster took the the same face as my father.
the road was bright, and he struggled desperate and nails with this stranger.
a -hand- reached for me from their tangle,
and i refused those fingers like fishhooks angling towards my palm.
in the moment that followed, i realized.
i saw my father later.
mutilated in a blue cave shimmering with darkness,
he was no longer waiting for the daughter who denied him.