The Nightmare, by Breanna Claire

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (Switzerland) c. 1790

The Nightmare

The cosmos weighs heavy,
and the night is pale white.
The feet are too timid to step;
the eyes are too frightened to see.
Imagination, like a captured ghost,
escapes the catatonic sentinel.
 
Dream’s drama set before
a curtain of pale white.
Narrow, depthless vision reveals
the limits of the subconscious.
The scariest reality of all
is that there’s yet another hidden world.
 
Charging in from this void
comes a horse of pale white.
Its billowing mane is the smoke
of the flameless fire from its eyes.
One dare not even try to tame this beast,
conveyor of the wild within our souls.
 
Led in by a demon,
our treacherous ally.
Granting what our lips dare not ask,  
unlocking uncommitted sins.
It grins to know our dreams better than we;
it grins to know it is our very self.
 
Flung on an icy bed,
your body is pale white.
Your lithe arms reaching languidly,
your bosom stopped at its high point.
All tempting organs are in view except
the hale, sinister shrine of womanhood.
 
Innocence lacks defense
when the mind is pale white.
But the nightmare is mine, not yours;
sleep leaves me unprepared to choose
guilt-laden paradise of dreams fulfilled,
or terrible abyss of loneliness.

Breanna Claire
​
Breanna Claire, who does not use a last name, is a transfeminine art historian living in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Having published only staid scholarly writing under her deadname, her gender transition has brought with it a transition to creative writing.  Her work has been published in x/y: a Junk Drawer of Trans Voices and The Literatus.