In My Dream  

The night before my mother’s first
chemotherapy appointment at the Cross,
in my Technicolour dreams of vicious spitting bile,
rusty old razor blades slicing my stomach and liver
to crying little bits, I saw myself in a mall
(and I really hate malls),

and in those malls, everyone was insane
and babbling DOOM and WARNINGS
and screaming, jumping from balconies
into piles of broken bones
or hanging themselves.

And then, in one of my many what-the-hell-did-I-eat
dreams that night, I heard my mother’s small voice
on the phone saying, “I can’t do this. I took one
of the pills I was supposed to take before chemo
and even THAT made me sick.”

And my mother, so usually brave, was scared
And so was I.

And then I blinked and saw, from the window
of the dining room of my family’s country home,
relatives, cousins, aunts and uncles and kids,
all dressed in white robes shining light…
and this was no cult of the crazed,
and there was no babbling
or chanting,

they were simply there
to say they cared…

And I blinked again and saw that the numbers
of people in robes kept growing into the hundreds,
the thousands… everyone I’ve ever known or
may come to know… everyone living or dead,
all existing for one glorious moment
in my head,

and it was the greatest dream
in the whole wide world.

© 2006 Mark Kozub