Dream Sequence: A Polyptych

or
a drink, a room, and a date

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani

Cats by the Window - Nicolas Tarkhoff 1909 Russian 1871-1930 Oil on canvas Musée du Petit Palais - Geneva (Switzerland - Geneva)

1.

At the back of the theater, / we watched guests being served, / my brother and I. / We were young, proud / to be children of an owner. / But we wanted to be / like the guests, too… / to eat and be served. / A waiter saw us / and handed me a drink / sparkling in a crystal wine glass. / It was gin and lime / but sweet and smooth, gliding down, / cooling my throat, warming my chest. / It was light in the mouth / but heavy enough for the head. / I let my brother taste it.

2.

My room needed rearranging.
Should I push the bed by the windows?
I asked myself.
There was a black cat outside
that kept scratching the pane.
I made sure I could see the sky
while in bed. But I saw another room
within my room. It, too, was mine
but I do not sleep there.
I walked inside it, only to see
a flowering vine that crawled through
the window that looks to a garden.
Around its yellow blooms
are little white butterflies
and one big yellow one
fleeting over like a worried guardian.
I stood by the corner
admiring my two rooms,
one where I sleep,
and one, something just to look at. 

3.

I was a teenager again. Someone was picking me up. A date, perhaps? I put on sporty clothes and told my mom I'd be at a friend's house. It was a lie, of course. I hurried outside when I saw a dark-colored pickup truck arrive. I grabbed my accessories and wondered if they went well with my look. But I had to rush and put on a gold ring on my middle finger, which fell while I was running to the car. The ring was almost beneath the tires. I signaled at the driver to not move so I could pick the ring up.

There was no ring.

4.

I woke up in an alternate life        jumbled with memories.
I miss my mother.             I might visit her today.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani has authored Letters from Libya, a chapbook of short memoirs about her family’s escape from the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014. Her poems have recently appeared in Your Dream Journal, Global Poemic, Luna Luna Magazine, and Fahmidan, and forthcoming in Rogue Agent, All Female Menu, and Agapanthus Collective. In 2018, she successfully defended her PhD dissertation on flow psychological theory in creative writing pedagogy. In between gardening and yoga, she teaches humanities at the high school level in the Philippines. She is currently working on a chapbook of poems on spirituality and the body. You can find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noeme.g.c.tabor.