September 21: Dream

Of travel over water,

my companion and I walk
a wooden causeway
down the middle
of a still lake, on either side reflected
trees are a corridor
of leafy barbells;
she is shiv-thin and brazen
like me.

After the water we ascend

a mountain, leave my father behind
in barren strata, her hand
where it ought to be, a bone flower
on my palm now where the air
is thin and our stories true.
This is for what we were made, descending

towards the lights of the town

where it is Christmas Eve
again and I have stolen her
from her family only to erupt
into my own: huddled
'round a mangy conifer, silent
aunt, silent uncle, only the
collie makes a noise, stripping
sour meat from a bone, no one
can think of anything.
Tin balls hang breathless
as we shimmer in.

This is all I've ever wanted:

to leave them there with the poinsettia
spears that the dog might eat,
only nineteen
I keep mouthing to myself
and to her torso now
unsheathed, breasts so small
I wonder how I'm going
to kiss them, her sounds
barely stifled infiltrate the Hallmark
cards strung on twine outside.
We lie together, stories implicit
in sweeps of hair, the skin
on the arm's hinge where creases
frame our music.

Waking to the dolor of a new day,

my heart is still swollen, rising
from those I can no longer love
towards a face I cannot name,
renewed by false serendipity,
these beloved shadows, moving
like smoke does
through a cloud.