the colour of my dream

This morning I dreamt I had a little boy. A son with copper skin and curly hair whose velvet baby skin felt right against mine.

My story starts among the rumpled white sheets of the bed of my boyfriend who is an ex in waking life - but I am maybe 23 in that dream, still past the time he and I were together. We are lying in his twin bed which is tucked into a 90° angle of the room facing a window. The sun pours across our idle conversation and unrushed intermittent make out sessions when suddenly a flood of memory comes to me. I had been pregnant. "Do you remember me being pregnant?" I ask him. "Did we have a baby?" "Suddenly I am sure sure I was pregnant, but where is my baby?"

Sitting on the out side of the bed, the white wall against my back him against my left side and the sheet resting around my legs, I search my memory and feel a trauma that blocks the release of any details beyond a baby bump noone knew to look for because I hadn't told; being in a yard when my labour pains started. Not knowing what was wrong but trying to get away from my family before an investigation revealed my condition Being asked "What's wrong?" Then "Oh my God she's pregnant!" Then nothing. No story I must have told or the decisions that had been made.

The dream segues to a beach. I am standing in front of a roughly constructed wooden stall that sells beads laid out on a counter, hanging from hooks, and from lengths of cord strung end to end in every available space, about 100 yards to my left I can see the deserted beach. The vendor is rastafarian, his locks are coiled around his head, his dark skin, smooth and shiny from the heat makes me think of an eggplant. He smiles at me from where he is leaning with his arms and legs crossed in the far right corner of the stall, but says nothing as I browse his selection. An SUV pulls up behind me parallel to the stall. I turn to see it is driven by my best friend from high school and inside is her daughter and a little boy who reaches for me and calls me mummy. "This is your son" she says as I reach for him. As soon as he is held against me I am drenched in the certainty he is mine. But where was he all this time? Who is his father? Who knows what happened to me?

I am wearing three strands of beads around my neck that hang almost to my navel and he loves them, my best friend says "He loves beads". He calls them something unusual but fitting (I can't remember.. maybe stacks), so I take him back to the bead stall because I want to make him happy. He looks like me and my family and the bead man says "that's a beautiful baby, is he your son?"

All the beaded jewelery is laid out or hung unclasped, so he doesn't understand that worn a lot of them are shorter than they appear. I shower his cheeks and the top of his curly head with kisses and he scans the beads and selects a short multi stranded women's necklace made of delicate pink translucent beads, I pick it up between kisses and explain while I clasp it "Look sweetie this is not the type you like, it's too short". I also can't afford the $32 it costs so I scan the selection for something he might like better that's also in my price range. Hugging him against my right hip I reach for a necklace of bamboo beads that's hanging on a cord strung from end to end of the stall and ask him... don't you like these much better?

I can't remember if he does, but I walk towards the water with him, and lying beneath us in the sand us are two oversized necklaces with beads as large as my head placed about a foot apart, one coral coloured with each divided by a smaller gold bead, I point to the other made of irregularly shaped jade hued beads and say "See don't you prefer these?"

In the distance I see a black shape gliding on the water, perpendicular to my gaze, it looks like shadow so I raise my gaze to what looks like an oversized black bird large enough to be a small plane flying low to the water. The black material flapping behind it reminds me of the plastic I used to use for making kites as a child. The shape hurtles towards the beach, the wind pulls back the black material to reveal a blue van which lands on its wheels revs a hard left, splashing the waterline down the beach.

I am back in bed with my boyfriend who is trying to make love, he is showering my with kisses that have no effect. I am still on the outside of the bed and he moves to stand facing me so his dick is pointing at my face, then smiles expectantly. "No, I'm sorry, I can't do that" he seems puzzled but gets back into bed and reassures me "You don't have to, it's ok"

He starts to deliver more kisses that have no effect and suddenly I am crying "Do you know what happened to my baby?" "How can I find him?" I look forward, to a life marked by the longing I feel sitting in this bed and repeat "I need to find him. I have to, I cannot live without him". "Where is my son?"