I dreamed last night of a church fete, an evening celebration, a nativity I didn’t recognise, hand collaged books made by my children, the snow, and a swarthy man who made me buy him dinner.
…
The night before I dreamed that you raped me. Inconceivable and somehow plausible, it was more frightening than the real thing.
…
Crying from both eyes this time, I took all the things you said and all the things you did and held them up to the light like precious ornaments, an old heavy paperweight encasing a sliver of pink coral in glass, and looked at them through the light which fractured into rainbows and then projections of old home movies, scratchy super 8 of us and you said that I should know that this was the last time and that you would never take me back.
And I knew that you meant it.
And I knew it was true.
eleanor j jackson 