When I feel you,
Sleeping next to me,
Chest rising and falling
Rising
Falling
To the rhythm of a dream
It can be hard not to join you.
My consciousness;
Like an old engine trying to turn
Stuttering,
Stopping,
Catching.
A dim spark lights me back,
Wiping a dream from my eyes,
To see you instead.
Smooth white skin like a blanket of snow covering a lifeless field,
Cool and soft to the touch,
-a shiver-
Other fields are uneven,
Covered in rocks and weeds;
My own,
Made up of thorns.
Your head resting on my chest,
A flower rooted in a stone,
I raise the pistol,
Stroke the petals,
Taste the bud-
But no response.
The sweet smell of lilac fills the room while the petals begin to fall,
Picked up in a whirl by the ceiling fan,
I reach to grab one,
The feeling of cardboard,
Purple turns to black,
The petals fall once more,
Lilacs?
Lilies, maybe,
Funeral flowers.
A blanket of lilies choke my bedroom floor.
My hand,
Resting on your waist,
The curve created by the meeting of a hip and a rib cage,
Reminds me of a small hill.
I climb it with my touch
Up
Down
Up
Down
A thousand hikes.
Climbing: forgetting each time where it begins or ends,
Lingering on the peak,
Loud lullabies sing,
I stop to rest for a while.
I see a cabin,
Plotted in a hill,
Surrounded by ice and snow.
A bed inside:
Large enough for us to grow,
Small enough to never drift apart.
Bookshelves in the back:
Filled with poems and prose,
Written from you to me, me to you
The same story told over again in different ways,
Each one more complete than the last.
It is Saturday everyday there,
Friday if you would prefer,
No Thursday,
Nor Tuesdays,
The sun and the stars coexist together.
It's built on a hill unaffected by the world,
So well hidden that not even time can-
I open my eyes to see you,
Chest rising and falling,
Rising
Falling
I look deeply into you,
As if to create a memory,
A photograph,
To grasp onto when your head is no longer resting on my chest,
When the lilacs turn to lilies,
When my hand no longer rests on the hill of your body where our cabin could lay.
I brush your hair and eyes open,
Longing and dreary, it's clear you have been dreaming too,
Of a cabin?
Maybe.
A kiss,
The smell of lilac on your breathe,
Or maybe lilies,
You tell me not to let you sleep again.
It's better to be awake now,
The time for dreaming is later.
