Last night I went to Africa. I spent a month there. I know this because I told you.This morning I am exhausted, turned over too many times in sleep and wakefulness as the day gloats over my body. Yesterday’s skyline made me dream of lavender forests. In the dreams I took stills of purple and blue bark, papery shadows. I wanted to capture the essence for morning.  In the morning I knew I would forget, but the image, or the fleeting, trails in me. I spent a lot of time by a river. Grey mud grows on me. In the mud there is a struggle. At times I would touch myself and find blood. I am not afraid of the scarlet here. The colour is rare and important, but tomorrow will be lost on me. I will be left with the flash of an impression in your arms. When I woke up I wanted to tell you something. A why was stuck in the mud burrowed within me.  A new cleft. When I open my mouth I create old wounds in silence. I will spend the next few days trying to cover them in dust. In the dream I walked many miles, and the stairs of a house burn in me. I felt the thoroughness in my legs. Before I woke I squatted in the schoolyard where I told you about it, inspecting the new firmness in my muscles. I realized that I didn’t long to impress you. There will be things we never know.  There are roads I walked and can’t remember now. The earth will not discuss it. Today the light affronts me. I am lost somewhere in Africa where you are not. Today I will not wake up. I will keep remembering the blood. The lavender forest spreads within me. A man will protest it with forgetfulness. I will push against the morning and slide into it. I will always slide into it.