Remember to Pray Before Bed - Part Two

If only you could see my dreams, the really bad ones

The cats that wouldn’t sit still for the photograph

My engagement ring smashed to pieces

Snagged on my brother’s backpack

Did you notice how I sprinted

Into the house fervently

Praying the pieces

Would cease

Shattering

To dust?

My eyes

Stinging from

Allergies and nights

Of sleepless pondering

Constantly wondering how I

Can maybe escape the hum-drum

Life of my veins’ thrumming while I continue

Humming melodies I never learned or understood?

What about the laughter turned sour with my feet

Locked around my sister’s neck on Christmas

Eve in a decked out house I’d never seen

Or the gazing from the seashore waiting

To wage war against the same ones

Who raised me, never praised me

Only grazed me with the shot

Top of my head, top-notch

Let it go and it will grow

Did you see that

Or did I only

Imagine

That?

Did I

Tell you

The dream

That I was floating

Through space on an ugly

Racehorse where my skin turned

Porous like the pumice I used to scratch

At my soul? Well, anyway, now you know how

I tried to fill the stories’ holes with fantastic, often wild

Sometimes kooky-eyed, asides for an audience

Who lost interest long ago, and I still go

On and on, rambling along, trying

Hard not to lose my mind

Along the ride with the

Upsides and downs

Looking around

You will find

The walls’

Sound

Alive.

Do I

Strive

In vain

To realize

The dreams

That had kept

My heart beating in

My sleep? Awake I own

The old mistake that believing

That my dreams would come true

Is folly through and through. Though

Today I give thanks that I’ll never have to

See it through, the waking of my family from

The fire that stole their lives was my intentional doing.