Pieta

Stefani Tran

Issue 13 • April 2014

Listen now. Last night I had a dream, and the dream was this: There were twelve stones lying in a field. They were scattered like loaves of bread. One by one, they were pulled out of the ground, rolled together, built into a tower. Last night I dreamed that the earth drank the wheat, thunder curled into the blue that opened the sky. That the girls ran laughing back into their houses; that the sun pulled the shadows back over the hill.

Then all the fishermen opened their nets, and silver poured out into the sea, and the veil was drawn over the temple. In her kitchen, the woman moved back from her oven of bread. The broom rolled out of her hand and now she slaps the dust from her feet, tucks in her knees to listen. Somewhere another woman’s child is closing his mouth. His voice streaming back into his throat, his mother pulling him into herself, open. The doves circle the courtyard and come in to land. In the streets they lower their palms, pick their cloaks up from the stones. And close the gates—now. 

The shards of clay fuse back into jars. Now. The darkness pulls the flames from the torches, the silence into the horns the song. Now. Bread is nothing more than bread, is not heavy in the hands that take it. Now open. Locusts are flying out of Egypt; eldest sons sit up in bed, the breath drawn back through their chests. Open. The light in the bush in the eye of the shepherd. The veil of the water drawn over the earth. In the undergrowth, the snakes find that they have legs, get up, and walk. Now open your eyes.