Nightmare by John Grey

Dhscommtech at English Wikipedia
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

It’s a mother clutching at her heart
all of a sudden,
dropping to the kitchen floor
and you’re suddenly
no more than an infant,
crawling across the floor,
trying to reach the one thing in the world
that offers affection and warmth.
Then, when you finally reach her,
you realize it’s not your mother at all,
but a stranger mumbling desperately,
“Call 911.”
More crawling,
to the phone this time,
but your tiny hands
can do no more than knock
the receiver off the hook.
For a few seconds,
you carry on a conversation with the dial-tone,
everything out of your mouth
mere garbled sounds.
The woman is dying.
You’re in a hopeless situation,
infancy one moment,
awake the next.
You press your hands against your head.
There’s someone dead in there.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.