I hear the horses, are there dozens? hundreds?
They are galloping toward my room.
I do not know how it is that they are in my home,
but if the riders find me, they will take me. Or kill me.
I know this.
I am alone. The top bunk of the bed where I am hiding
rattles from the pounding of their hooves.
Play dead, I think, though it is not so much a thought
as reflex. I slow the red race of my breath until it is brown
and dry, until my chest is still as stump,
until I’m a lump instead of a girl.
When the men on the horses arrive, I do not move.
I do not wince nor cry out when one pokes at my sheets
with something blunt and cold.
That’s the deadest girl I ever saw, he says.
I hear the feet of horses as they stomp and rake at the ground,
hear them strain and clench and rear. Then
a whinny, then a whirl, I can feel their breath,
and the horses ride off again.
Is this when I learn that the way to save myself
is to fully shut down? In the years to come,
I will find new ways to play dead. One is to starve.
One is to hide. One is to look so green and thriving
on the outside that no one could ever guess how brittle I am.
But those tactics are for later. For now, the girl in the bed
that is me and not me marvels that she is still alive.
It is a long time before she moves.
Such an evocative dream, full of fear as well as courage. That they are all men is in itself a telling detail from a little girl’s POV. But those tactics at the end speak so clearly of the real world, not the dream one.