Spume-Teeth, Sky-Lips

Last night was a partial solar eclipse and turn to the new moon. No one in our place could sleep too well. I finally dozed between about five and six and had this dream: I went up to a bar at Burning Man and poured myself a cup of water from a jug and drank it down. It was cool and good while I was drinking it, but afterward I tasted salt. I asked some of the people nearby: “Was that saltwater?” Yep, a shorthaired, dykey looking woman told me. “Is it going to make me throw up?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she said, patient and canny. “But the good part is, you won’t have to worry about electrolytes the whole time you’re here, since you drank that.”

Then my daughter hopped into my bed and woke me up. I asked her how she’d slept and if she had any dreams. “I dreamed we went to the potion store and you drank a potion, mama, a potion that made you act like a kid.”

“Did you like that?” I asked.

“Not so much,” she said. “You had to have all the princesses, and every time the door buzzer rang you’d go running to the door to get it before I could. And then you played with all my friends instead of playing with me.”

“So what happened next?”

“I got another potion and I put a leaf in it and you drank it and you turned back into my mama.”
Later, I Googled “salt water dream meaning,” though I have a pretty good idea what’s up with the dream. And this Federico Garcia Lorca poem came up. There’s another translation out there, too, but it sucks compared to this one, by A.S. Kline.

The Ballad of the Salt-Water

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth,
sky-lips.

‘What do you sell, troubled child,
child with naked breasts?’

‘Sir, I sell
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘What do you carry, dark child,
mingled with your blood?’

‘Sir, I carry
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘These tears of brine
where do they come from, mother?’

‘Sir, I cry
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘Heart, this deep bitterness,
where does it rise from?’

‘So bitter, the salt-waters
of the sea!’

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth.
Sky-lips.