Brilliant Sleep

When the person you love the most is determined to break you into pieces.
A dream from 8 years ago.
My sister pokes me in the back with a stick like maybe I'm dead. Tentative yet deliberate.
She raises the stick towards the clouds and stirs the sky a bit. She's ten but she has her current adult eyes and I see some green in them, shifting greens, and I'm afraid, always afraid, of what she's going to say.
I'm gonna poke the clouds and make them bleed.
She had been poking me. Maybe looking for blood.
We're at the river, right on the edge where the water is lapping at the sand bar. The stick dips into the water, she catches a shell and tosses it over. I flinch even though the shell lands near my feet.
Some green oozes from her eye. I glance at the water. If I can reach it I think I'll be safe.
You don't remember much. She says this tonelessly so I start to relax.
It's true. I don't remember much. I've been hypnotically separated from events in my past.
Chronology is challenging. I'm altered.
I hate that you don't remember the funny stuff, when I was funny.
Your emotions, your reactions, are always on delay.
This part isn't true. I'm always frightened of her.
If she lifts the stick from the water I'm diving in. I casually gauge the distance between my feet and the stick. She points the stick at me and I realize I've been here before.
I remember I know how to swim.
My hands part the water and I am in now, in.
Her stick sails above my head as light cracks from my wave to the clouds as I stoke and push myself through. The clouds are gone and she with them.
Bright drops bounce away from my fingers. I saw this a few night ago I was thinking, when the storm hit and the lightening lit each feral raindrop on the back porch.
Someone is swimming next to me and I turn, extending my hand.
It's my pretty boy dog, Beau. He has the stick in his mouth.
He grins and winks at me.
We are laughing and floating.