Nightmares must be gentle to do any harm.
They stagger through my unconscious mind
the way the dead tips of palm leaves flicker in the wind.
In the absence of sleep, I converse with them
from my second story window,
through the air above the boulevard.

They break out in golden sweat
and their leaves clash and rustle
when I ask where all the clouds have gone.
In the face of such hostility,
I crave the trees of home,
happy to accept their fate
even as they begin to wreak
of the death of summer themselves.

They shed leaves like flesh
that bleed smoke the flavor of rotting earth
as they burn through late October.

Light dissolves
and shadows move like vertigo,
the way Lizzy Volkamer moved through the Midwest
the summer before last.

The palms won’t speak to me
And Lizzy watches dead leaves gather.
Until they’re burnt, she won’t speak to me either,
though she misses Lo dearly.
Because Lo only lives in the summer months
and is miles away by now.

Ashes began to fill a sky already in decay,
so she swam through August to escape.
She followed the heat to where it settles in other seasons,
where vicious sleep peruses such fugitives.  

Se faltan las nubes
whisper the palm trees in her dreams
even as the wind picks up
and offers to help them say so much more