“How was your birthday?”
(before it has happened)
is the dumbest of questions
that made me look crazy.
So I asked of the others
on the twelfth of our August…
and the answered reward
was the laughter of Amy.
They screamed,
the triad
as they twitched without words
All of her life
had been tragic and strange…
In the dream that I had
which wasn’t about HER
who never had heard
of Alice in Chains.
I witnessed her leaving
without what she came with
I tried to return it
but couldn’t remember
The business of grieving
with no one to stay with
can cry and
can burn –
could it even dismember?
The blood spray and spatters
As the dream loses focus…
as the words lose all meaning
and are lost to the vandals.
None of which matters much in the hereafter…
None of which woke us…
I blew out the candles.
Written by Jason Wright
June 14, 2026
For Rachel
———————-
I was inspired by a dream I had, in which I, with a group of others had saved some girls from some type of disaster or horror. We gave them a ride in our large vehicle which they entered via the passenger side window. The vehicle was a car at the time but was often hard to define – changing shape and proportion. One of the girls had never heard a certain type of music, a particularly band name which also changed as it was discussed, but was at one point Alice in Chains – and this girl was paranoid that someone would steal her bag, despite us all being in a car with nowhere to escape to. We took the girls to a mystical home for girls (which was less a home and more magic like our car). They got off our bus (which was a bus at this point and the not the car we’d been in when we rescued them) and we felt like we’d accomplished our task, until we saw that the girl had left her beloved bag in our car. We had the bus driver return and I took the bag to the magic space ship home for girls. Two girls were entering the ship and I stood in / near the doorway to appeal for help in finding the girl who wasn’t anywhere that I could see. I described her to others and nobody knew her. I couldn’t remember her name but said she’d never heard Alice in Chains. I got the impression that this was heaven or a safe space for women who had been abused. Rachel Lynn Burleson Eanes, who I’d met at a hospital years before, was there – but in the dream her name was Amy. Another girl was in the same hospital with us, Amy Fulford, so maybe in my dream I just got mixed up? I called to her. She didn’t respond but gave me a look. Maybe because I was calling her Amy and not Rachel? I asked her how her birthday was – knowing that we had the same one, only 2 years apart, but then realized that her birthday in 2026 hasn’t happened yet (which explained the insulted / amused expression she shot me) but then I said aloud that it hadn’t happened yet. I said, “Well what about all the birthdays I missed? All the August 12ths?” and she didn’t stop and she didn’t turn, but the laughter she gave was genuine and it was hers. It was hers. I woke up. I knew what I’d heard in the dream and who that was and I held onto that sound for as long as I could. I didn’t eat. I didn’t take my meds. I wandered to the computer and wrote the dream down as best as I could, even though the weight and the depth of them was fading quickly…and then I wrote this. And now I can take my meds and eat – I can kiss Aaron, and start the day, because some of this has been jotted down, which gives me some peace at least.