Dream

My Secretive Mind

I saw you, day before,
Moving on, on some dating app;
You looked good; I smiled;
I didn’t fall into some anxious trap.

After ten months, I thought,
I have begun to let go –
But now I fear my mind
Keeps secrets it doesn’t show.

I know now that nothing
Was what seemed about you;
And yet, last night, as I slept,
I dreamed about you.

Do your dreams wake you up, too?
Do I haunt them the way you do mine?
Do I walk and talk in them, in old homes,
That now no longer exist in time?

Does the feeling of loss permeate
Through each moment of the dream?
And do you now dread sleep
Because of what might have been?

Does your heart fill with pain
And wake you up as it bursts?
Does your throat get parched
As your anxiety thirsts?

Was I but a dream to you?
Was your love something I dreamed?
Have I been such a terrible fool?
Was nothing what it seemed?

Dreams have you lying in bed with me;
Conversations are now not the same;
Maybe, they manifest to tell me
I was never just the one to blame.

My dreams these days are only of you.

I feel you in them.

I smile –
Then I wake!
The sense of your loss overpowers me!
Sleep a casual acquaintance
Is now an enemy –
I don’t wish to sleep anymore!

The night scares me!

You were in my arms
Through the journeying
of the stars –
Now they explode –
And plummet toward me.

I want to reach you!

But I am now terrified –
Of those stars –
Of the night –
Of my dreams –
And of you.