dream deep

Close your eyes and look at me. I'm here, I'm right here. It's alright. Here are my hands, these are my fingers, I have ten fingernails the same as you do. Here is my heart. 
Come, I'll tell you a story, a lovely sad story to make you cry. Once upon a time there was a place by the sea. There was a person who came to this place by the sea, running from a terrible, unspeakable thing. MURDERER they cried, and also HEATHEN and FALSE PROPHET and all other sorts of unmentionables that would break your heart. 
I remember standing on the edge of a cliff that fell away into the grey and stormy sea, and there were pink flowers on the cliffside, growing all the way down to the tide-mark where the waves reached the stone. Almost red, with a gold centre, and they waved in the wind. In the sea there were great snakes, turning and toiling and fighting each other for space and time and beauty. They were black and yellow and great streaks of grey, larger than anything anyone had ever dreamed biologically possible, with red eyes that haunted you, and sought you out. Miles upon miles of these sea-dragons, dancing and dancing and dancing. The sea was grey, and the sky was grey, and the air was a grey air, cold and breathless, like any second rain or hail or snow would fall. And I fell, down down down down down, into the bright blue of the bay, the blue that only comes when the sun shines on clear water. There was white sand below the blue, and I was safe there. There were caves under the red flowers where the dragons didn't come.  
Then I remember a bridge across a wide open space, it was wooden and falling apart, and someone I knew was on it. And it shook, and the bullock fell, and we fell down down down. I never saw him again. 
And I'll touch you if you like it, if you want it, but the only one to feel it will be you.