An Assault That Never Happened
In dream, he and I work together
and he’s Indian for some reason
though I don’t know many
Indian people in real life
Is that worse than my subconscious
assigning him this particular race?
We’re left in the office by ourselves
to wrap up a project or two
and I wonder why our two colleagues
dash off so quickly, leaving us alone
Suddenly, he’s behind me and one hand
clamps down on my shoulder
the other a brown-skinned snake
burrowing its way under my skirt…
I wake up to darkness in my bed
sleeping husband at my side.
Grateful for my escape back to reality
I look up at one corner of our room
where the off-white wall and ceiling meet.
It looks a little darker than the rest
like something’s perched there, watching
drinking in the dread seeping from my body.
Too late at night and too tired to be scared
I throw a two-pronged trident at the air:
A prayer for peace of mind
And “fuck you” fastball
flying with enough force to assuage my fear
as I drift off to more gentle dreams.
Eloísa Pérez-Lozano lives in Houston and works as an events and publicity coordinator for Arte Público Press at the University of Houston. She has studied poetry with Dr. John Gorman, and has also worked with renowned Mexican poet Lucha Corpi since the spring of 2014. She is a long-distance member of the Latino Writers Collective and a member of the Gulf Coast Poets and The Poetry Society of Texas. Her poetry has been featured in The Texas Observer, aaduna, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and The Acentos Review, among others.
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