Europa

I dreamt I flew to Barcelona. Although a bright mind would figure the trip to be a long, overnight affair, slumber's hazy science swept me away in a series of brief movie stills. Upon landing, although my departure and arrival remain assumed and forgotten, I met a middle aged spanish woman with tan skin and eyes of a most peasant brown. Those same eyes, darting forth and fro rarely sought contact with mine. There were other men present, several of them old and of varying ethnic backgrounds. She knelt down to ready what was to be my bed; her plump appendages pressed and tucked with eager precision. My eyes linger on her shirt, the horizontal stripes of black and white held my attention throughout her work. 

Supper must have been prepared. The other men and I are lounging about in the white corners of her home. A small man with a body that seemed to have been squeezed from a bottle of toothpaste shook his head at the clamor she made. The sink spat its water in a most erratic and vindictive fashion, with varying temperatures of discomfort and a nefariously mechanical nonchalance. Her arms are elbow deep in the misbehaving appliance, it looked to us as if she was drowning a small rodent or bathing a child. It is darker albeit the same time of day. The shadows are not quite as black as they could be, but a telling shade of grey. 

The black lines in between the white tiles shone bright; I trace a linear lane to an elderly black man. He traversed the same road moments before I had. The scowl upon his face frightened me. I felt as though I should have acted as if I was insulted, made a scene in protest. I bury my head in cowardice's halcyon bosom. I feel very cold and vulnerable. What have I done to offend him? His glazed eyes, tinged with a drunkard's pink, are starving scarabs nipping at my toes and clavicle. This feeling is not right. She was pacing about the house with her lips, painted with brown, picking things up and putting them down. She appears close when I need her. I am standing; she unravels my panicked stare, her lips pursed. The man had been rambling for quite some time; my mind is unable to register his buoyant word groupings. Animadversion seeps from his dark, crackling lips; falling in chunks and collecting in small bitter pools about his feet. I tug on her shirt from across the room. For a moment I can understand him. He didn't like me because I was a son.. a son of a-- he commences the chewing of his words a moment before the mystery of our feud is solved. She speaks. It didn't sound like she was from Barcelona, although I myself hadn't the faintest idea what a native spaniard might even begin to sound like. Her voice was intensely familiar; perhaps a future acquaintance rather than one I've forgotten; the voice drifts through my subconscious a dismembered memory. He didn't like me because I was a son. Alright. A son.. of a...