she lies in her bed and tries to dream tries to make this world fade away because dreams are like bubbles of unreality popping and pearling iridescent shine addictive like the stuff in her father’s pipe smoke like haze like mist like dreams her dreams are safe her dreams are prophecies and she dreams of a better life and she slips into sleep like a seed between lips dancing past the sharp jagged ivory teeth slipping down the pink softness into darkness, sweet blessed soft darkness that slips and embraces silk womb of unconsciousness carry her down and the darkness twists and pinches and opens to reveal a whiteness so bright it blinds bright and strong like artificial light after dark like the liquid down her mother’s throat like a star in the sky that’s beginning to explode supernova and a figure walks through the brightness wearing a dark green suit and a red tie and a shirt white white white like the infinity around him and he turns and he smiles and he looks right at her and he wouldn’t yell wouldn’t curse wouldn’t beat her wouldn’t shame her wouldn’t keep her inside wouldn’t touch her wrong wouldn’t scorn her cooking wouldn’t want a second wife and her dreams are safe her dreams are prophecies and she dreams of a man in a green suit and a red tie and a white white white shirt and she slips into the dawn like a girl gently lifted and waits for her man that smiles with white white white teeth until the day he comes walking into her life like an omen like a prophecy like a dream.

Annabelle Taghinia is a writer from New England. She is a junior in high school and spends her free time writing poetry and fiction, including a collection of stories about Persian women. Her work has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel,South Florida Poetry, BULL, Yellow Arrow Journal and others.