by Ella Shively

The basement is where I keep my dreams.

There’s a poet there, too, preserved between pressed pages. He says,“hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

He can talk about dreams all he wants. I am already a broken-winged bird.

I pace my house slump-shouldered, a tattered blanket dragging behind me like a tail with molting feathers. I perch on this dusty windowsill and watch the world I can no longer be a part of. I’ve lost everything–my power, my fame, my wealth, maybe even my mind. I cannot fly. Still, I hold fast to my dreams.

I keep them chained to the basement walls. I’ve sedated them with morphine and locked them in birdcages. I hide the biggest, oldest, most dangerous dreams in a gilded cage that will only open with a retinal scan from my third eye. I clip their wings so they cannot fly away. The world outside this house is a dangerous place for dreams.

Every evening, I sweep the floor of the feathers they’ve plucked from their bodies. Sometimes I wake to the sound of their squawking and shrieking, cawing and crying, but I will not let them go free. I hold fast to dreams.