Flickerings of distant memories flutter
past my psyche into nothing.
Through an astral plain I drift.
Over nonexistent lands
my feet carry me, floating.

She slinks away, the black cat, agile—
“The dreamscape is a fragile
thing,” she said. I'm following,
changing, borrowing her shape but then
the story fades, too vague
and just like that
it's vanished.

Incomprehensible images wander
as clouds through skies of colours unseen.
I'm lost in an ocean of questions
that pierce my ears as hooks through the fish's mouth
but I cannot ask,
for a white hot zipper seals my lips.
A voice whispers, breath damp in my ear:
“Watch, listen...”

The ground opens beneath me
and I plummet.
Feeling cold against my skin
I'm naked, vulnerable, fearful.
This pit must be bottomless but
I've landed, unscathed.
Bathed in grasses soft as silk
smelling of life and freedom
I'm enveloped in relief, protection.

My body moves, uncontrollable
as reeds in a river
yet still guided by a wind with no origin
playing melodies of beauty immense and painful.

Wonder fills me as the song ends,
ominous and heavy the silence looms.
Flowers die and the grasses wither
as I'm pulled away,
reluctant.

Higher, higher I'm lifted
into lucidity
past ladders and staircases, tunnels and gateways
closing before my eyes
as nearer draws the moment I dread more than anything.
Despite my persistence,
I'm solid again.
I'm myself, mundane and mourning:
awake.