The Dreamer

Some ancient and

Corroded New Year’s memory:

I’m wearing a silk jumpsuit--

My favorite at the time,

As bright as bougainvillea,

Vibrant and alive.

And so was I.

Ecstatic and climbing,

Scaling the snow-capped streets

Past the garbled graffiti into

The latest, loudest party.

That was before The Great Humbling,

When I dressed every day for a funeral,

Acutely aware of the way

The tall tombstones in the cemetery

Reflected the joyless skyscrapers

Looming against the pallid fog.

Life was desaturated then.

I couldn’t care less.

I didn’t bother with

The small things like

Brushing my teeth.

I watched the blood from my gums

run into the porcelain sink.

It meant nothing to me.

Months passed.

Years.

Until finally, some small voice erupted,

Like a blade of grass shooting out of the concrete.

It commanded: “Go to the jungle.”

So I fled.

Threw myself against the dense,

Shimmering landscape and prayed.

Prayed to the laughing crystalline sky,

Prayed to the parrots flashing

Like jewels against the brush,

Covered myself in dirt, and sea, and smoke,

And prayed.

I returned with a flicker of fire across my body

Along with a distinct feeling of something

I couldn’t fully see.

When I finally arrived home,

My mother gifted me a jacket

That she had hidden in her closet.

For all the times I’d been there,

I never once had seen it.

It was made with stripes of satin ribbon and

Against our eggshell walls, it exploded like a prism.

I marveled as I touched it,

A beauty almost too precious to hold

In my cold and calloused fingers.

I told her, “this reminds me of that story,”

The one I heard when I was a child,

Of Joseph’s special jacket.

He was a dreamer too, and

Trouble always followed.

My mother laughed and countered,

“Well honey, I’m not Jacob…

And you’re my only daughter.”

After some silence, I put it on

with tender reverence,

feeling the fabric against my flesh

Like a second skin as I

Walked in reverse, in a blur.

Back through the jungle,

Back through the cemetery,

Back through the snow-capped streets,

Back through the New Year’s party,

Back and back and back

Until I saw myself,

Tiny and nameless,

Swaddled in all the colors,

Smiling at first light.

When my eyes opened,

I was finally walking forward.

-DIA LUNA