Issue 8, Summer/Autumn 2009

Dreamless
by Marja Hagborg

One day I realized I had no dreams anymore. Where had they gone? I asked my godmother, who said the dreams had disappeared the day I understood my mortality.

My dreamer’s wings had been cut off and the canvas always full of colorful images was empty, so empty there wasn’t even a pencil-sketch on it. Soon it was covered by soft dust and cat dandruff.

A pair of black lacquer shoes was my childhood dream, but some years later they seemed tacky like men with sideburns, or a vacations in Marbella. Black boots walked better, they took a girl to places, demanded respect, shouted “to Hell with you all” and made young men confess their secret desires. But that was all they were good for. Who wants to walk forever? Who cares what anyone’s heart desires when you want to have a night full of colorful dreams in a room full of lavenders?

Helga didn’t have dreams and she no longer screamed. The silence almost hurt my ears while we watched her thin body jerk when the electricity went through her brain in the hazy afternoon sun.

Later we watched her sleep, a sleep that would last an hour or more in a room that was painted sea foam green. We let Helga rest, Michael said, there was no hurry to take her back.

I asked Michael what the purpose of all this was, would she ever stop screaming and throwing herself on the floor for more than a couple of weeks. Not likely, he said casually as he put his hand inside my uniform and kissed my eyelids.

I felt like crying. The smell of fresh cut grass and lilacs outside the open window blew in with a breath of wind, poetic and pathetic at the same time. I had a bad habit of falling for married men. Helga had a bad habit of falling, Michael had no bad habits at all, or that was what he said. He may have been honest. I never found out because I quit my job the following week.