I Dreamed of a Girl

and she was free

Last night I dreamt of a little girl.

She was not of flesh but of black ink, and she moved with stop-motion jerkiness across the horizon of my closed eyelids.

Up and into my vision she stepped: one, two, three, then came to stillness in the centre of the canvas. Bold against an empty expanse of olive-green. Empty, or brimming with unseen potential.

I did not see her face

but her hair was dark. A kind breeze whipped it from her shoulders into a tangled dance. A jerky, stop-motion dance.

Beyond her, a yellow sun hung over the abyss.

She was alone.

Maybe her parents were dead. Maybe she had escaped some horror that had swallowed them soul and limb. Maybe she had run and run to arrive in this emptiness. Maybe no one now living knew her name but her.

Or maybe she was just a normal child, observed in a normal moment of aloneness.

A normal child

who had traversed the river until she reached its estuary. Who had traversed until she found what she now paused to contemplate. That which I could not see. That which filled her abyss.

She is the song of the unseen ocean, the cry of the unseen gull. She is the pinprick grain of sand, the softness of all the sands in unison. She is everything.

Slowly she began to shift on her feet, to move away towards the yellow sun that held its light and did not share it. Into the abyss. Into olive-emptiness. I called out to her, but she could not hear me, for though I wrapped her up inside my own heart she was so far away.

I called out to her

but she could not hear me. 

So I called out for her. I did not know her name, but I cried her out for all the world to hear.

And I will cry her out until she is free.

As she grew smaller, her inky form began to blur and fade. Maybe she fell into the abyss. Or maybe it held her afloat. Maybe they revealed themselves in all their colour to one another.

If we called out to her, maybe she would hear us.

She is the song of the unseen ocean. She is everything.

And I did not see her face

but she is mine, she is me,

she is yours, she is you,

she is ours, she is us,

and I will cry her out until she is free.