disfigured dreaming
though i was walking as fast as i could, the hospital hallway seemed endless. my best friend had just become a father. while running, i sensed i was dreaming and i knew i’d see my oldest friend for the first time. i also understood once i’d wake up, i’d never see him again: this friend did not exist in physical reality. when i had finally reached him, his face looked joyous and proud, holding his newborn baby up in the air. when he passed the infant to me, it gradually became clear that its head and face were horrifically deformed. observing its massively disfigured face and skull, i expected to wake up. to my shock, the baby gently snuggled against my chest. with a never felt before sense of exhilaration, warmth and love, i looked my oldest friend in the eyes and said, this baby is absolutely gorgeous. i could feel it in my bones that i truly meant it. perhaps that’s why for the days afterwards, i was haunted by the thought that it should have been him to dream this dream and not me.
© 2022 Giorgia Pavlidou
Bio: Originally trained in clinical psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Giorgia Pavlidou is a Greek-born American writer and painter intermittently living in Greece and the US. She received her MA in Urdu literature from Lucknow University, India and her MFA in Fiction from MMU Manchester, UK, (though her meetings with visionary LA poet-philosopher Will Alexander have been and still are exceedingly more impactful). Her work has recently appeared in such places as Caesura, Lotus-Eater, Zoetic Press, Maintenant Journal of Dada Writing and Art, Puerto del Sol and Entropy. Trainwreck Press (trainwreckpress.com) launched her chapbook inside the black hornet’s mind-tunnel in 2021. Ireland-based Strukturriss Magazine selected her as the featured visual artist of their January 2022 issue 3.1. She’s an editor of SULΦUR online literary magazine. Additionally, her book of poems and paintings, “Haunted by the Living – Fed by the Dead,” is forthcoming with Anvil Tongue Books, and she'll be "featured femme artist and poet" of Clockwise Cat Magazine's 2022 spring edition. Before devoting herself full-time to painting and writing, she worked as a clinical psychotherapist for about ten years.
No comments:
Post a Comment