The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2018

Rêve Cécile Bralier – Four years old – You will ask me about the word humanity with the TV remote in your hand. You will sit in your jammies on the brown sofa, and the TV will be blasting music: the sort of discombob- ulated music that works as a Google translator for emotions. Music will say “be scared” and you will be a little scared. You will want to be scared because the music will say so. And when the music stops, you will repeat your question about human- ity… You will smile with the overlapping incisors, and I will notice the dimple on your left cheek. I will not understand how you can be so little and so black and so smiley in the middle of your question. I will have a hard time focusing because of the TV. I, too, will want to follow the orders dispensed by the music, but I will also want to answer your question in a way that makes sense. I will not like my confusion. I will criticize myself for that. I will be aware that TV-induced mixup does not necessarily work as a good excuse for not answering your question. Still, I will be grateful for the TV to hide my perplexity. I will be consoled by the characters in the TV doing what they are expected to do. I will buy time by asking you if you want a sip of water. You will say yes and ask for me to add something in the water to make it more flavorful. A stick of melon? I will ask. You lived for three years in a place where water only comes in yellow “improved buckets” with a constraining lid to dis- suade hand entry; the result being a damaged intestine and an everlasting taste for flavored water. I will never have seen the place where water only comes in buckets, but I will have read about it and I will imagine it, and my imagination will have its own memory. I will have forgotten nothing of the place that The Meadow 57