This morning, I dream of a birch tree bench
upon which she strews jars of sea glass,
filled with blues and greens or something inbetween.

Sunlight shifting like prismarine snakeskin,
shed where sky meets eye, dyes the white wood underneath
in bisecting lines that ripple and breathe.

Thumbing at sea glass, I see her smile, circa redress,
in a pile of polaroids passed over the wood by
hands neither she nor I possess.

And then I see me, my head leaned into hers,
two gray trees grown too free. Hairs tangle and end
centimeters from the edge of the bed.

We look
together.
That’s when I cry.

Beneath two trees planted too close,
below silver halide wiping blue and green from her eyes,
in black ink that's yet to dry, she leaves a note
that I can’t read
because
this is a dream
and we were the lie.