I am sorting, Beloved.

I dream that my sister has drowned
in the ocean. A sailboat went down.
There were others on board.
Two friends ready me to dive and find her.
I don’t want to scuba dive, I am not trained.
I don’t know how to use the equipment.
I am afraid I will drown too.
I see her daughter, who is four.
Her daughter knows from my face that her mother is lost.
My friends say, “You will be able to find her.
You can find your sister.”
“But she is dead,” I say.
“I don’t want to find her.”
I know that they are right, I could find her.
But I might be separated and lost, in the depths.
I don’t want to die too.

I wake up.
The dream sticks.
My friends wanting me to wear a borrowed wetsuit
and scuba gear and go down untrained.
My sister floating in the depths, dead eyes open.
But she has been dead for years, I think.
And this is the sea of dreams
my unconscious
the greater unconscious
everything.
So why isn’t my sister’s body dissolving?
Changing to a skeleton.
A skeleton coming apart over the years.

I don’t need a wetsuit
or scuba gear
to dive in the sea of dreams
I can breathe in the unconscious
I have been to the bottom of the sea
many times before.

My niece is four in the dream.
She was thirteen when her mother died.
I think she was lost to me long before that.
The dream knows.
Her mother was lost to me
when my niece was four.
Drowned.

When the dream returns
I will say yes to the dive
I love the sea and the ocean and going deep
I don’t need a wetsuit
I don’t need scuba gear
I don’t need to find my sister’s body
She is gone
Dissolved
I let my past go.

I have not dreamed of the ocean

since.

__________________________________

I really don’t know where my sister is, because of the family schism after she died. Are her ashes somewhere?

This poem wanted to be born. For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Who knew?