Guantanamo Babe

I dreamt of myself as a child in London, though younger than I was when really I did frequent that lovely garden, and lovelier it was by far in my slumber, though I had inexplicably altered.  The child I was played by a pond carved into the patio.  In truth my mother had dug squares out and inserted an old sink as a pond, sort of a bohemian experiment that failed and became stagnant. In the dream it was a sprawling success, filled with lillies and glassy surface.  Child me wanted adult me to fall backwards into her arms as a bond of trust, she would stand with her back to the pond and if it failed, would fall in, possibly to strike her head against a paving slab on the way to water.  ’It’s really hard,’ she grinned and rubbed chubby paws together.  A teenage version of me said something from the side.  I refused the child i think, i could not trust her yet, i could not risk her.

She had large dreaming eyes, and there was intelligence there, though she was lazily, slowly blinking like a cow.  She was 4 or 5 years old but big and fat and blonde, with much acne around her mouth and in all the divots of her vast face.

The garden was dusted with lint and snow in an hour hovering between deep night and a silver dawn, it was timeless and stuck.  All the trees were tall and slender and foxgloves high as houses wafted in an unseen breeze.  the temperature was brisk.