THE WATERY GRAVE

At first, while Susu howled and I dreamt, all I could see was my skin. In the dream my skin spread all over me like sand in an endless desert. It covered my bones like fabric, it stretched tight, acres and acres of brown-brown skin covering my bones and me. My legs and arms were as long as the Nile, so long I could not see were they ended. After my skin and arms and legs came earth, dew kissed, a dusky brown, wet and vital beneath my acres of skin. Suddenly in my right ear was the sound of rushing water and as if twisted by unseen hands my neck turned stiffly towards the sound, and I realised that I was lying near a stream. My nile-long right arm stretched across it like a bridge and kept going, into a dark forest miles ahead. I flexed my fingers and felt the thick soil of the forest floor caking underneath my fingernails.

The stream seemed to go on forever, farther than my eyes could see, on and on forever. It never stopped.

I saw at its bottom-a feat that should have been physically impossible but in the typical nature of dreams was not-a girl who was drowning. I looked closer and saw that she had my face, my eyes and nose and ears and mouth. I realised then, that the girl at the bottom of the stream, the girl whose lungs were collapsing under the weight of the water, the girl who was drowning with no-one to save her, was me.

I woke up.