When children are small you can sprinkle nutritional yeast on millet and tell them it’s fairy dust. With a word, it becomes so. Such is the power of language. What if we could do the same with our dreams? Here’s a poem and flash fiction rambling on about such things. Let me know what you think.

little shadow

perched on a purple wall
staring at my sleeping child

what do you see shadow bird?

do you see. see like me?

my grandfather became cloud
grandmother became butterfly.

I sit in her chair. I sing with his voice.

what will be left for her when I, transform?

maybe I become you.
maybe I watch from a wall.

flying with one word.
staying with another. word.

dream me alive. over and over and over.
clove and nutmeg. owl spreading wings.

forest hears, nothing.

another dream

Transform

One night during a dream of chaos and war a woman gives birth to a baby with hair the color of fresh snow. The baby blinks at the woman with eyes as green as ancient ferns and coos like a dove. What if instead of forgetting the baby when she woke the woman decides to name her Mabel and she becomes as real as coffee.

The woman dresses the dream baby in clothes the color of fresh marigolds and wears her close to her chest in a carrier woven of the softest wool. She takes the baby out into the rain and her laugh becomes lightning. The world sparks around them and glows brighter.

The plants in the woman’s house grow with the baby—greener and taller, greener and taller until the woman is forced to cut through them with a large knife, like an explorer in a jungle. She and the baby laugh at the silliness of it as birds make nests in her living room and a family of rabbits discovers the perfect place to live within her closet.

They spend most days outdoors so Mabel can make the grass thicker, the trees taller, and the flowers bolder. The neighbors don’t know what’s making their gardens grow and the woman decides not to tell them. Not everyone believes as strongly as she does and she fears their disbelief will pull the child away.

When Mabel starts walking the woman takes her outside in the middle of the night and upon seeing the full moon the child begins to sing. The tiny lilting notes cause the stars to dance and the moon to move closer and closer to the Earth. The woman knows this won’t go unnoticed and will have terrible consequences, but she hesitates to act because love defies logic and gravity. Love defies most things.

Mabel however makes the choice for her, wiggling out of her grasp and floating toward the moon. The baby with hair as white as snow returns back into the dream where she was born and the woman walks home alone. Her house feels different but she smiles the same because Mabel is as real as coffee and her physical absence changes nothing. She wraps herself in wool and dream walks to visit her child.

Such is the power of language. And love.