Daydream//Hannah Burns

This one is a dream too: It starts with Emerson and I camping. I am surprised to see her there, for
whatever reason. She is asleep next to me and I envy her. I want to be back there, under the dream veil, however thin. I close my eyes and feel the tangle of earth below me, pressing upwards, demanding to be felt. I sink, willingly, losing the weight of Emerson beside me. And when I listen I hear the soft chatter of people talking in the distance, glasses clinking, children singing, laughter like a choir. A low hum from the forest, cars from whatever road is closest. I hear everything in the quiet, and then her soft snoring. Then suddenly I am in the deer stand, with my dad, and he’s alive. We climbed up the thin metal ladder to reach the top of the tree, a small bench, barely big enough for two, cloaked in a sparse cover of branches. My breathing feels too loud, my cheeks too flushed, I’m about to come out to him. It is early morning, the way the fog hangs over the field, the coziness of the heather like a cloak. Cottonmouth. My dad is not dead and there is so much to say. Why are you breathing like that, he asks. I’ll stop it, I say. Don’t stop breathing, he says. Whispers out a hushed laugh. Now keep quiet. I let the moment pass. How will I ever tell him? You’re breathing funny again, he says, what is it? Out of the corner of my eye, I see a doe sprint through the field. Nothing is chasing it, as far as I can tell, and my dad, who isn’t dead, is looking at me. It’s nothing, I say, I’ll try to be quiet. His trained eyes off the field, he casts them down. I wish you’d tell me things, he says. It’s so quiet between us. It hurts me, and I can feel it in my chest. He knows I’m keeping something. It’s my opening. The birds chirp, the fog lifts, and my opening hangs in the air as dawn breaks. There will never be a good time for this, so I start to say it, but I wake up before I have to see his face change. Because it will. He will look at me differently, even if it’s just a dream.

Hannah Burns is a fiction student at The New School’s MFA program, originally from Charleston, South Carolina. She is a WriteOn Fellow, co-host of the After Hours reading series at KGB bar, and contributor for Atwood Magazine. When she is not working on her novel in progress, you can find her listening to live music, at the movie theater, or getting lost in Greenwood Cemetery.