A Fairy Tale Dream

On the fence sits a cat with a cracked eye staring down from its moony perch, inviting the dreaming children down a path strewn with lost earrings left by mothers fleeing something, not their children, surely, not their cries as they follow behind. Perhaps it is the cat with the cracked eye they flee, as it watches the mothers escape to a black island surrounded by seas pink as fallen rose petals, the children paddling tiny boats through waves rising like thorns from the softness to a wharf where fishermen love their catch so much they toss back the rainbow trout, silver fins glinting like earrings carved in the shape of a cat beaming through the crack in its eye at lost children dreaming as they roam the roads, looking for baubles. Instead, there are motorcycles, howling down narrow alleys like wild beasts needing a quick fix, searching for rabbits to feast on, a child or two to chew. They roar down a long road studded with earrings — left, perhaps, to mark the way in prized pearls and silver, crescent-shaped like a shadowy moon on the wane, or in gold and ruby disks round as fallen suns, pried up by children in search of rainbows, in search of mothers who disappear when their children dream of cats with cracked eyes. They glimpse their mothers' skirts vanishing around corners, the colors streaking like rainbows, their hair long and loose in the air, their ears bare to the thundering wind.