Poem: Dream Journal, October 7, 2024.

I gaze out over an impossibly clear sea. (The plane.) Beneath the waves, the glimmering lights reveal vast settlements, pelagic sprawl, a skyline in reverse. Entire neighborhoods wrapped around the bay, above it and below, in this far-wrought future.

(The plane ascends, gargantuan.) A wave swells in slow-motion; the nose of the beast presses outward, stretching. The surface tension doesn’t break, doesn’t break, until it does. 

The fuselage splits the heavens in two. The dream liner makes a seamless transition from sea to sky to space. Passengers line the elliptical windows, tourists perhaps, or colonists bound for a new world. 

I turn my attention downward, to the high-powered mercury lamps, wondering about a structural integrity failure in that hostile deep. As soon as the thought occurs to me, I’m there. Paddling in the silt, a balcony backlit in the gloom. Reaching desperately for the surface, wishing I’d have filled my lungs. 

Amidst the seaweed and submerged concrete, a man swims up; I grab for his foot, then I don’t. I’d rather drown and wake up than be a dick. A voice in my head says, you know you wouldn’t just give up.

October 2024 Erin Rehil

Photo courtesy of the artist. Taken 2013, Gwangalli Beach, Busan, South Korea.