Kin to symmetry,
dreams, like roses, flare the course–
Stalk your own wild seeds.
In the lighted cursive
of stars,
she finds herself,
coursing,
a glaring speck of cosmic language,
a flickerflash dot
yellowing in a deluge of night-sea,
tethered to distant moons
and Memory,
of who she was,
and is,
tenderly traced
and grooved
in swaths of glacial velvet,
that soft gaping yearn
between intimacy
and loss,
between falling
and rising,
where she burns,
and leaves off,
a silent kiss
melting the bluest frost.
The green woman from my dream
handed me an ax, told me to break
down the door. I held the ax limply,
hesitating. Break down the door,
she insisted, an overbite to her tone,
this time adding the word goddamn.
Break down the goddamned door.
I lifted the ax, froze.
Her voice softened, a testimonial caressing
of my cold skin, as she assured–
There are no demons in there,
I swear.
What you’re going to find
is what you really fear most.
I knew what she meant, what
wasn’t waiting for me on the other side,
what I feared.
I dropped the ax and walked away,
the green woman’s disappointment trailing behind.
Some fables, you see,
remain unfinished,
especially the ones in which
failure is an option.
Dreamed: wine-dark roses
blooming in early winter–
Grief, subject to change.
