(Un-numbered)

The Night’s Dream

written by Mathias Svalina

I am in the middle of a herd of horses, galloping over dry hills, the sky clear & such a jewel-like blue that it is beyond blue, a blue only the night has the ability to see. I are me, the night, but I am also a thing with legs. A thing that can run with horses. I am a kind of happy I might have never felt before. The horses toss their heads, they leap little leaps of joy. Finally, I peel off from the herd to catch my breath. The herd, waiting for my return, runs in a tight circle below a small hill. A woman in a purple t-shirt dances on the hill. She gives her whole body to the dancing, utterly uninhibited, moving how only she can move, how only her body, right now, right here, can move. It takes a moment to realize she is dancing to the sound of the herd of horses, her body inhabited by the thudding of the horses’ hooves, a rhythm so complex that it had merely sounded like noise. Through her dancing, I decode the noise, hear the interlocking rhythms, hear each horse, their hooves, their hearts, their breaths. I pick up some dirt & drop it & watch it flutter to the ground. I see the music in the dirt, in the minerals & organic materials. I see the trees & grasses & bones & flesh this dirt once was, I see the billions of years of flame & churn in the stone dust. The dirt sings a nightsong just for me. A raindrop falls from the clear, blue sky. Another. Another. And then it is pouring. I hear every raindrop hit the dirt. I stand in the rain. Years pass. I am still standing in the rain, though there is no rain, though I am spread over a carnival, over a museum, a prison. I will always be, no matter where or when I am, standing in this rain.