Gawn is my son. In waking life, he is a man: in the dream, he is nine: here, he exists with a host of others like him. In a square room, parents perch on sand dunes which, at less than a moment’s notice, can be  stabilised by marram grass: vanished by sea. Gawn fixes his gaze on me: it penetrates my guilt at having given him away.  How ironic it is that he makes eye contact with nobody else. A man, a woman, approach in turn and kneel down  to engage him: he speaks in a monotone, continually tugs at his earlobes. For a long time afterwards, he sulks on top of a cupboard. “I want to build a bridge,” he eventually mutters. He descends and crouches by a model railway   to line up all the detached parts.  I sigh: a bridge is no metaphor to him. But in a dream, it is just that, I remind myself. Outside, I choose the causeway between opposing seas: one a light turquoise with artificial waves, the other more sombre – the colour of Gawn’s eyes.       Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON First published in Poetry Salzburg Review