BABY BESIDE THE FLAG

I saw my two-year-old self. She was crouched in a fetal position in a corner of a funeral parlor, next to a coffin draped with the American flag. I felt her grief at the loss of her father and the loneliness about abuse that followed. I knew she was ready to come back to me. I went back inside the dream, carrying a teddy bear. When she saw it, she came flying toward me in a shimmer of light. I guess we became one. I felt pain in my heart, as if a bullet of light had been shot into me. But it was a happy pain.