The Night of Rosie

Midnight, and the whispers begin

I cannot wake from this transient plane I find so often

So I now follow them closely, instead, and wait

Patiently for the words that will still echo come morning

A child tonight

With a worn cotton rabbit hanging losely in frail arms

Standing a hair's width from my right cheek

She is only present in the peripheral with my eyes sealed shut

Dishwater hair and the eyes of a frightened fawn

She needs her mommy, but mommy is gone

Knobby knees beneath a white hem, she is not sobbing

But she is confused and unaware of her hidden frequency

Between these lines of awake and asleep is a consciousness

Where she and others exist in a limbo state of frozen time

The whispers begin low and static, jumbled and nonsensical  

Until you know to listen for strings that join them

I ask through my silence for what is remembered

Never more than bursts of scattered pictures

And she creaks into a chilled calm, a statue

It is midnight, and the visions begin

Rosie, she stands on a wooden deck 

A farmhouse white and sundial behind stringy locks

She is alone and waiting, maybe seven

A worn cotton rabbit hanging losely in frail arms

Clay red and cracks beneath bare feet

I am running from the laughter of boys unseen

But close behind, menacing and mischievous

Until an electric bash to the back of my skulls pulls me conscious

But I drop down quickly again to a sharp blue rush

A cluster of air pockets escape above as I sink

Sun fading into a black wet tunnel, cold and muted

I am heavy and loose and drifting to sleep

The girl is gone when my eyes shoot open

And I know she'll not return

She only came to seek an ear

To drown in sunken midnight whispers