Storms from Jupiter
some nights, your dreams are filled with the mundane, the near-forgettable. you’ll check your emails. you’ll walk to class down the road shrouded by giant palm trees. you’ll buy v8 and shampoo at the supermarket. but you find that these dreams are your least favorite, for their playful tendency to bleed into your waking reality. you are looking for emails that aren’t there. you are checking your bathroom to find you’re still out of shampoo. you’re not sure what day it is anymore. what conversations you’ve had and which you haven’t. your father asks you, have you talked to your mother lately? and you say, yes, of course. i talked to her yesterday on the phone. but you think of the conversation you had, how you told her you felt sick, you couldn’t stop spitting up rubies and finding broken seashells in your pockets. how she told you the last time she went to jupiter, she bottled up its reddest storms. she said she can’t wait to give them to you when she comes home. that can’t be right. you take it back. you haven’t spoken to your mother in months. tonight, you dream you’re in your childhood room again, under the dim glow of its only working light bulb. not a single dust particle is out of place, and you’re on the phone with your mother again, but in this dream, you are screaming endlessly endlessly endlessly. no words careen out of your broken mouth just guttural, wounded sound. you are ceaseless, you give no room for her to respond, but in this dream, she doesn’t feel the need to. in this dream, she understands. Wanda Deglane is a night-blooming desert flower from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology and family & human development. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Former Cactus, among other lovely places. Wanda self published her first poetry book, Rainlily, in 2018. |