Fractured Perceptions

I wake up at the cusp of dawn

With fractured perceptions –

I am a vast sense of longing

shaped into a ravenous sea.

Out of my mouth, the birds have still not fled,

and in the back of the mind

a vision is calling from the distance.

Even the heart is sleepy,

sinking into the secrets of its romantic fantasies.

I wake up on top of a mountain

soaked in sunlight –

I am only a trace that makes you dream,

and all my fears and anxieties

gnaw at the vertical in my center,

hardly resting.

Out of my gut, a thousand fires have been lit,

and in the back of the morning

an orchestra plays its first strings.

Even the broken-hearted sing,

wiping away their tears and stepping into

time’s passing.

I wake up on the farthest side of nowhere

with an acute awareness –

I am but a gust of wind

whose resting place is the interstice

where your thoughts cease to be.

Out of my most violent of emotions,

a stillness rose and calmed the sea,

and in the back of dusk falling,

a puncture wound stands witness

of a memory.

Even the sky falls once in a while,

it runs out of breath in the middle of its dances,

and it collapses –

There,

where the tenderest parts of the body,

meet the creases of your bedsheets.

And I wake up,

and it is spring.