Dusty Bones, Poetry by Kate McClelland

Genre: Nightmare/Horror/Dream

Dusty Bones
by Kate McClelland

I have a recurring dream

That I wake up from every time

In sweaty, heart-pounding panic

I am lying in my bed

On the brink of sleep

And realise in my semiconscious state

That someone is standing over me in the dark

It’s a different person each time

Leaning to stare

Or maybe to study me?

I have not figured that out yet

I get the impression

That I am an exhibit

In a local museum

A pile of dusty bones

That now and again

Sees the observer

Staring agog

And for one moment –

We see each other –

And realise we are both being observed!

There is a moment of comprehension

I see their faces wide eyed

With horror and dreadful surprise

See their ‘about to scream’ face

And that’s when I wake up

To find myself sitting bolt upright

And shivering in my bed

My ears catching the last remnant

Of the scream

And with shock realise –

That it’s me that screamed

God knows what they see –

(For I feel they are real people)

A skeleton screaming back at them?

Or just a feeling of being observed

By a preserved corpse

At a local museum

Dusty bones, in a glass cabinet

Kept in a gloomy annex

Not ‘dust to dust,

Ashes to ashes’ for me

But an unnamed relic

Just a sticker on the glass box stating:

‘White, Female, Homo Sapien Sapien – 21st Century’

On exhibition, never to rest

Screaming silently again and again

© Kate McClelland 2015
© Kate McClelland 2015© Kate McClelland 2015© Kate McClelland 2015© Kate McClelland 2015

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