But sometimes I get so tired that I forget I’m not allowed to wish for things anymore, and I find myself wishing for the one thing I’ve always wanted. The only thing I’ve always dreamt about.
I wish all the time for a friend.
I dream about it. I imagine what it would be like. To smile and be smiled upon. To have a person to confide in; someone who wouldn’t throw things at me or stick my hands in the fire or beat me for being born. Someone who would hear that I’d been thrown away and would try to find me, who would never be afraid of me.
Someone who’d know I’d never try to hurt them.
‘The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering grey,
We’ll talk its pensive hours away; –
‘Iernë, round our sheltered hall
November’s gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter’s hair,
And I am glad to
I fold myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I wish and I dream of impossible things until I’ve cried myself to sleep.
I wonder what it would be like to have a friend.
And then I wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are coming from.
I wonder if they’re coming from me.
‘’In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream-that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
A lonely spirit guiding.
What a though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth’s day star?’’
Sen benimdin: rüyanın görkemleriyle doldum.
Ben, uykuda sultandım, uyanınca hiç oldum.
•••
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
Bir düşüm var benim
öyle bir düş ki;
bir gün Georgia'nın kızıl tepelerinde
kölelerin ve eski köle sahiplerinin oğulları
kardeşlik sofrasında birlikte oturabilecekler,
bir gün adaletsizliğin ve baskının sıcağıyla kavrulan
Missisippi bile
bir özgürlük ve adalet beldesine dönüşecek.