“A while ago I had a dream in which I was starving, bleeding, naked, and running from something. I ran for what felt like years, I was so afraid of the thing behind me. Near the end of the dream I collapsed in the middle of a dark and freezing neighborhood whose roads were lined with dead-bolted houses. I had run my legs down to the nubs… all I had left were these horror-show upper thighs. I dragged myself to multiple front doors in the neighborhood and knocked, but no one answered. In the last scene of the dream, I saw a light turn on in one little house. Before I even made it to the front door, a young woman in a white sweater came out and dragged my filthy body into her clean living room, covered me in a blanket by the fireplace, then laid my stink-bomb head in her lap. She ran her fingers through my hair and sang a song in an unrecognizable language. I died listening to the song, longing to understand it. When I woke up I wanted to write a poem about what ‘being claimed’ felt like, and what came out was ‘Prayer.’”
—Nathan Parker