The most enlightening dream I ever had
Was the darkest I had ever known.
He was there, and no one else.

There was a stair case.
We waded through the pitch black sea stretched before it.
We went mindlessly, slowly, and groggily, not speaking.

We finally reached it and I searched for a light switch.
But the wall was endlessly smooth.
He was impatient.

He scooped me into his arms and marched up the stairs.
I curled up in his chest, rocking with each step, so very comfortable.
At the top, he spoke quickly and softly in my ear, "I love you."

And then the lights were on and he was gone.
In the dark, I hadn't seen his face.
And yet, mysteriously, I knew exactly who it was.

He wasn't you.

I love you.
I love you more than
A warm summer afternoon
On the back porch
With a novel
And an iced tea
In a mason jar
With a pink bendy straw
And music floating on the breeze.
But what I'd love even more than you
Would be to unite you and me
And the back porch and the iced tea
And throw in a dance with that music.
I'd remember that summer day forever.

Don't call me babe.
Don't call me ****, either.
I'm not a body,
I just have one.
I can keep it healthy, I can do its hair,
But my body isn't me.

When you call me, call my soul
Call my heart, call my mind.
My body will heed the call, too.
But call to my body
And I recoil.
Call only to my body, and it won't ever be yours.
So don't call me babe
Unless you want me to run.

Our goal should not be happiness.
Happiness teaches nothing
Demands nothing
Remembers nothing
Inspires nothing
Nothing.

Beauty is in the contrast
Or else all is white
All is blank
With nothing to color the emptiness
Only when joy is rubble and foreign
Will anything worthy be born

Happiness is no goal
It is a plague
A curse
A coffin.

We'll never reach a balance.
You tug at me and then let out so much slack I fall on my face.
And I do the same to you.
There are times I know you love me,
But there are times I know you don't.
I always love you. Always.
Overpoweringly so.
I guess I couldn't have expected anything else.
We started backwards.

Lived together for three weeks the day we met.
Sat together all day, ran around until we fell asleep.

We got together every few days in late summer.
Hours upon hours of laying in the sun.
A meal together.

Now we're lucky to see each other every other weekend.
A couple hours.
Racing around, in plain sight.
We might get to hold hands.

Soon enough we'll go to college.
Meet on holidays.
Uncomfortable hugs.
Changing without each other.
So much we'll miss.

And then we'll be strangers.
Backwards, unbalanced strangers who will love each other while the leaves float away
While the snow dances on the wind
While the grass struggles through the mud
While we grow tan laying on the grass
In separate parks on separate days living separate lives.
We'll keep a matching pair of creased photographs
And each tell our own separate children a story
Of our first, backwards love.

Wake up!
It's morning, you know it, the world around you says so
A chorus of beeping: the clock, the coffee ***, the first cars with impatient drivers, the shrill door chime of the store at the end of the block with its first customer of the day, the microwave saying your hastily-made oatmeal is done, the phone alerting you to your first message of the day, the computer screaming about the emails that piled up overnight.
Wake up!
It's morning, you know it, it's time to get up.
Rip yourself up from the sheets
A horse throwing its rider
Tear those silken sheets that have for so long enveloped your mind
Wake up!
Do you smell the coffee burning, feel the changing seasons, see how that old woman's orange scarf flickers in the wind like a flame?
Do you?
Wake up!
Hear the music playing, dance along with it, make some cupcakes, read that book you promised Amy from accounting that you would read months ago but never did, feel the chafe of those shoes against your dry heels, poke around in an antique store that has a scent of ancientness.
You've done all that? You're awake?
Good, now go write a poem.

When I peer into the mirror
(Clean clear glass on silver
A porthole into backwards-land)
I see a certain spice in our swirling eyes
Absent in those of the lonely

Cloves and cinnamon and vanilla
It shrouds us in its heavy fog
(We don't mind, we see not much
Past each others' eyes)

In the mirror, our arms are tangled
In a comforting, swaddling mess
Our heads are leaned together (a teepee)
And our smiles stretch around the world

But the mirror shows us backwards.
(Reverse, opposite, inside out, and outside in)
And I know that really, you lean away from me and frown.