Hannah Siden

Just Dreaming

I’m that acid trip gone wrong
The one you read about

Where they got stuck
In a permanent mind-warp

Grabbing at disappearing futures
Through kaleidoscope eyes

Forever and ever amen
I’m that moment At World’s End

Where the Black Pearl heaves
Its sigh, then up is down

Jack Sparrow’s revelation
Adrift on glassy, sunset seas

All is not as it seems
I’m Alice through that looking glass

Finding a room not quite my own
Myself not quite myself, you see

The doctor declared, at first
That I had a simple inner ear infection

See how she’s moving? he beamed
She’s got vertigo!

The residents nodded hard
Scribbled this in notepads

While I stood in my paper gown
Holding the earth steady

He proclaimed I would be fine
By the following morning

Two years later I am still waiting
To wake up from that bad dream

The one where the world
Turned upside down

Start from the beginning but

Only include what’s necessary I
Don’t want to hear what you had for lunch
Haha

I’ll strike that from the record but
Seriously we’re running late and
I’ve got another consult in
Fifteen minutes so

Hang on slow down I
Didn’t tell you to speed through

Go back
No not to there, that’s
Not important you

Really must learn what to include and
What to leave of yourself it’s
Embarrassing to hear you

Rambling but come on now chop
Chop we’ve got
Five minutes left so I’ll ask just
Once more, can you

Start from the beginning

I eat half a Pringles container
Meant for my boyfriend
Then call my Mom
Who can’t pick up
My tongue is going numb
I’m allergic to these

But I was having a hard time crying
And just needed to feel something

My scans came back inconclusive again and
Again and
Again, and

I’m scheduled for another scan in two weeks
Another needle another contrast another
Allergic reaction

Last time, I could feel the dye rush into my vein
Run up my body
Like in a Sci-Fi movie, except
I gained no special powers

Just a plastic cup of orange juice
To prevent me from collapsing when I tried to stand

I wonder if instead these scans are draining me
I always seem weaker after
And no closer to the answer

I eat a mug full of gummy bears when I get home
Cause they told me to have glucose
This is cheating a bit
It makes me feel ill but
Alive for a second

I wonder if my body is just tired of being examined

As though
It can’t be trusted to be a body
As though
It’s not enough

I wonder if it’s hiding on purpose, but how
Would it tell me?