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Shears
by Marian Van Horn
I have been working on letting go of things that no longer serve me. Past hurts, painful experiences, things that cause me resentment or anger. Then I had this dream the other night.
A small 5-year-old child is floating around a room. I am watching her. She is about a foot above the ground and moving effortlessly. She is focused on doing that and nothing else; enjoying the simple movement as children often do when absorbed in the present moment.
When she floats by me, I ask, “How do you do that?”
She looks down and says, “With these.”
She pulls out a huge pair of silver shears. I am a little shocked because they are quite large and sharp and she’s only five years old, so I worry a bit, but she hands them to me and says, “You try.”
I take the shears and start to float. Not with as much ease as her, but I am able to skim across the room a few inches above the floor. It is exhilarating.
I thought about this dream when I woke up. The exhilarating feeling of letting go stayed with me, so I looked up shears in my dream symbol book and one description was “cutting out of your life the things you don’t need anymore.”
Marian Van Horn’s interest in writing began in 1979 when she found some poems safety pinned together in her grandmother’s cookbook.
Marian’s poetry appeared in the Sitting Room 2012 Annual publication and in Fantasia: Poems by David Beckman & Friends.
