In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

Your body has a knowing. Like an antenna, attuned to tremors in the air, or a dowsing rod, tracing things so deeply buried you have no language for them yet. The Saturday it arrived, I woke

College: a freedom so profound the joy of it didn’t wear off the entire four years.

Heather could afford to think this way because she didn’t need to claw, constantly, for what she deserved, or live her life in the gray just to understand the people she loved.

I was low, I was scraping the floorboards, I was a puddle of muddy water you stepped over to get to the sidewalk, but I didn’t care. Desperation buzzed through me, electric and dangerous. I would scream; I would turn the table over. I would do anything to stop this.

I pushed the memory of his sickness, and its cause, so far down it formed a tiny rupture in the center of me, a small black hole of my very own. And no matter how many years passed, I never looked inside.

One life, full of mistakes, and not enough time—not enough chances—to do it right.

It felt like waking up on a Saturday morning when I was a child, bedroom full of sunshine, no cares in the world, nothing to do but play.