David Gianatasio
Water Sign

“... if I should die before I wake,” you whisper, as the rain slashes through the half- open window beside the bed.

Torn sails flap above the boiling brine, roll deliriously through the swelling spray. Angry gulls cry, their cries like metal exploding into some soulless abyss. You grab the wheel, salt sting your face as the ship leaps. You’re soaked with sea and sweat. The ocean dances with unholy light.

The shade snaps and, if awake, you’d see, flickering in the storm like scenes from a Depression-era newsreel: A service station, sans pumps, and a row of yellowing triple-deckers, their windows cracked in patterns like maps leading nowhere.

Hands surface, followed by a head. Then, more hands, more heads. An army rises from the shimmering sea. The wind hisses. You shiver, face chapped raw.

At age 9, during a storm, you fell through the skin of a half-frozen pond and nearly drown. Sometimes it feels like you never came around. You’ve spent the years suspended. You dimly recall your rescuers’ hands, stretching, reaching, straining -- hauling you back to the surface. Strange, when you revisit that scene in waterlogged dreams, the hands always appear from below.

And they’re dragging you down.