ALYSON MILLER

Dream Animals

 

It is four am and the sound of sobbing outside the window pulls us from dreams filled with underwater shapes. For a while, we mistake the noise for a small animal in the gaps between the wood and the insulation, crawling into a heart-space of heat. But then we listen, and the crying turns into a keening that breaks across our whispers, like something ancient has been cut and broken, lost deep in a great sea. In the muted light, something violent unfurls, a sudden fury in which bones meet harder surfaces and glass cracks and falls into driveway gravel like sparks. Then there is sleep, as we are tugged back to unconsciousness before a day hung-over with the shadow of dying things, and the ghostly echo of ‘please, please, just let me in, please’.

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Alyson Miller lives in Geelong and teaches literary studies at Deakin University. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in Staples, Verandah and Groundworks. Poem published in Famous Reporter 44 ).