BED OF ROSES

I was the waves and pull of the moon. You were always tired.

I wrote apologies in braille,

and buried them in the foundation of your sleepy house.

The last time we spoke I was broken open and

crushed

by the taste of death

in the fruit of your breath.

Now we lie like oceans and stars in collaboration,

kaleidoscopic, whispering soft constellations.

Catching words like snowflakes,

my lips are blue with frost and I murmur music

soft

like jazz.

We are together, nearly melting,

and nothing is strange about this.

You pass me the fire in your chest through the pores of your skin,

it lights me like love on Christmas morning

and I can still

feel it burning

within.

I am the rain penetrating your cover.

I am the wheelbarrow filling with water.

I feel fluid, permeable, incomplete- I realize I have lost my map.

Didn’t I have one with me to begin with?

Is there another?

The path I’m stumbling is dim with lanterns burning

unfinished thoughts

and sentence fragments,

restored and stolen moments into magic,

turning our landscape

into lonely madness.

You are intangible.

The thirst of a thousand years lives within my veins,

in the ticking of clocks,

and in the space

that hovers

between days.

I hunger for you.

With feverish, storm-like tenacity, dizzied persistence, and resolve-

I pour over your blueprints like a leatherbound novel.

I read your skin, your freckles speak elegant foreign languages to me;

The world is vibrant, alarming, juxtaposes.

You pick up a fountain pen and make art of air.

I become tattered and stained like glass.

The crescendo peaks and ends and the symphony closes.

Bloodied by thorns and shattered at last,

basked in full moon light,

I fall asleep in a bed of roses.

I awaken and you have just arrived, unexpected and unannounced.

I only know this because there are thirty-seven alarm clocks resounding.

I am in my pajamas and they are made of afghan yarn but that is not important.

It is, but I don’t understand why. I will, but you won't.

We are in the house I lived in as a child.

This house does not have pleasant memories, it does not suit the timeline.

I am confused, and my pajamas are unraveling.

You say you'd just been traveling, but I know the words are lies.

No one else is outside,

except the neighbor

who never lets me swim in his pool.

Mr. Sousa.

He watches us closely and I am not surprised.

He's sharper than he seems.

Sometimes, like now, he is made up more of teeth.

I tell you this is a dream, and you are dead, Mr. Sousa is also dead,

and I haven’t even lived here

in nearly twenty years.

And also, you are not allowed in my dreams anymore.

But I am less angry with you lately, though.

You are lit like sunbeams, less an Angel than I have ever seen.

Beside me, I notice casually that my neighbor is gone,

a woman- a whisper, really- in his place.

Do I know you? (I ask translucent, empty space)

“My name is Freedom,

will you come with me though I know not where I’ll go?”

(I nodded ever slightly so)

From a mountain summit

on the ocean floor

under the surface of the sun,

fountains flowing from ice,

I freeze and fragment and let you go.

White knuckles clutch a velvet sack of ashes,

fractals framing broken glasses,

sticky memories, a messy, marble mosaic

covered in moss and grasses.

My hands are empty.

I am tired.

I fall asleep under a gnarled tree,

it is marbled with snow.

Somehow I’m certain I will awaken at home.

You will be gone, as you are now.

Freedom and Future will greet me and suture my soul,

whole with a hole.

And I will thank you for visiting me.