Who is Opal?

I’m swinging in the hammock

under the deck

falling rain sounds like

hundreds of tiny drummers

Lake Lucy overflows

water swallows the dock

creeps closer to the steps

when I run into our house somehow

I wind up in the house next door

Lucy drifts in the boat

in her dreary

dusky

dusty

living room

petting Mr. Crunch

with her pointy red fingernails

frantic white bats flap toward me

a circling whirlwind of letters

I rip an envelope open

my face is drenched

the writing is blurry

I stare at the paper

before my dream melts away:

Opal! She was my precious girl! She loved me best! Not the wicked one you seek. I won’t rest and neither will you, until you get me Opal’s rowboat that was named for her and her dear collar that she once wore. No one can help me but you. They refuse to listen, like they did all those years ago, when I wanted one of her pups. They’re stubborn and cruel, but you hear me. My own brother won’t listen. No one listens! Those aren’t just things. They’re mine because Opal should have been mine! How I miss her. Return her boat and collar to me at the bottom of the lake. Blackout poetry - Opal@ get her things to me

“What things? Who’s Opal?”

when I awake

my hands wrench pages in my notebook

like I’m trying to read my dream.