Mother (whispering): Wake up wake up. Wake up.
In the dream she is in her garden, watching emerge from a child’s single shoe part-buried in the dirt the head of a wasp, un-naturally large, the width of it filling the whole available space so that it must writhe to extricate itself, the sound of it loud as a droning lawnmower.
Still watching, she removes one of her own shoes, aware how carefully she must gauge the moment of its killing, when it is manifest enough that the shoe will no longer afford its body a protective carapace, but too not so disengaged that it might fly away, evading her intent, and all the while still praying to wake, coming too slow to the realisation she is not actually asleep.
In the dream she is in her garden, watching emerge from a child’s single shoe part-buried in the dirt the head of a wasp, un-naturally large, the width of it filling the whole available space so that it must writhe to extricate itself, the sound of it loud as a droning lawnmower.
Still watching, she removes one of her own shoes, aware how carefully she must gauge the moment of its killing, when it is manifest enough that the shoe will no longer afford its body a protective carapace, but too not so disengaged that it might fly away, evading her intent, and all the while still praying to wake, coming too slow to the realisation she is not actually asleep.
