Blue Hat Dream

Curled up on the floor. In the middle of the day. I dream. Images of hats and pills come out of nowhere. “I visit my garden each morning searching the ground to see if the unused pills I found in my mother’s pill boxes, and planted, had produced a rose or purple Phlox. I buried her tablet boxes, buried them, like tiny coffins. I lined the miniature graves with crushed blue velvet, (like the cases that stored her elegant forks used only on special occasions, at four o’clock tea-time, the cake served primly on gold-rimmed plates). Treading through the wet grass, rootling through the fertile soil, I saw, without surprise, blue hats growing wild, velvet and tulle, pills and sequins scattered and whimsical, my mother decorating their botanical brims with silver cake forks tied with ribbons”. I wake up, eyes blurred, I can barely see. I make a cup of tea, cut a slice of currant cake, and eat it with a small, antique English fork.