The first rule of the open door
is someone must walk through it.
Someone has to slide off that bench
and find a new seat, lean their head
against the cool glass and sleep
across time zones and hillsides,
rows of corn running alongside.
I dreamt of that place, I shouldn't
say again because I don't count myself
a liar. But the table was set, wine poured
and that dog wouldn't hunt.
The sidewalks ran with the moonlight
of one thousand doorknobs, teeth
of hungry doorways calling to be filled,
to be necessary. All the orange flowers
covered my grave that night. Branches
shuddered with the blackness of one
hundred crows, the moon just slivers
of leftover cheesecake crumbling down
into the spines of hotel bibels and bloody
veins of the orchard's nectarines.
And the clouds beat their knuckles
against the coming night until their passion
bled out onto the bleached white sheets
on their chests, all purple and red and blue
and bruised.
A colossal stillness hushed its way
across the swaying seashore.