by Evan Grillon
I dreamed my mother took me sailing. She never took me sailing. My grasp of boat
terminology was tenuous at best. In the dream I read the manual, looking for a section that tells
you how you got into this boat in the first place, while mother just sat on the deck in a long white
dress.
Her lips were pursed and her legs were crossed and her hair was up in a wispy bun that
was perfectly white as well. She had a glass of red like she’d had on that night. The sea tossed
our boat and spilled wine on her dress; then too I had run to get a napkin and some seltzer water,
as I did in my dream to that cooler on the deck.
Gulls were snatching fish from the water like miracles and I went to dab at the spots,
but she insisted: she’d do it herself. I begged that we needed to figure this out before the wind
died down, but at the table I had poured her another, having promised myself that I wouldn’t
ever pour her another. Then a dolphin at play somersaulted right over our little boat.
Holding her up, having read of grace, I had said “That was close, mom, wasn’t it?” On
the white carpet with red wine everywhere; on the shore with the tide coming in and creeping up
her dress, she said “Your father would’ve been able to fly that boat,” and I said “Planes. He flew
planes.”
Evan Grillon is a writer who lives in Florida. His fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Salamander, and Triangle House Review, among others.