dreamer
Sleep escapes. Evaporates into insomnia. When do you forget to imagine our separateness? Forget that I might be lit with sorrows? Because I love the shadow of beauty as much as beauty. And I love the thought of a song as much as the song itself. And I love a sleepless night more than a night from which I cannot remember my dreams. I am all the stories I never told. All the letters I did not send. What, then, is poetry? When do you forgive yourself for noticing the gap between us, for the loves and ecstasies, even though all are inevitably lost? And now there is still the lump in my throat. The solidity of sadness that, too, will go away. As it always does. This is how tears get swallowed. This is how the bricks of why? fall into the pit of my stomach. Attach themselves like pearls, as though all unanswered questions would offer themselves in this way. Strings of pearls. Tears. Words. Indigestible. And reminders that I am still here.
(And somewhere in there you ask, Are you okay? Again. My heart wanted to crack. But I am flesh. Not rock).
