I made up two things,
People — or lovers’ rings.
One writes the lines,
The other paints the signs.

So let me share how they feel,
Let me present them as if they were real.

Dorothea or Niki — the dreamer in me.
Doesn’t know which she is anymore.
She’s the version I write in my poetry.
Me as someone to adore.

She speaks in stanzas, dreams in rhyme,
Wishes for a love to last past time.

And then there is Poppy Piume,
She’s a lot like my real world friend.
But in this poetic arc that isn’t her doom.
Here — we are the a story with no end.

She answers in dreams, if not in the day,
A voice I imagine when I drift away.

In my imagination there is no goodbye,
But in sad reality she doesn’t even reply.
So I write, as she paints, and I try not to cry,
And I pretend our silence is just a lullaby.

I laid my body on the tall grass.
She wrapped me in a rustle of green.
I closed my eyes in the shadow of a tall pine,
curling up so the pain wouldn’t spill beyond my heart.

Consciousness sinks into nothingness.
I feel the particles of my “self”
breaking into a million molecules.
I flow through the grass and seep into the earth.

Now my body puts down roots,
nestling against the pine that weeps with resin.
My emotions pass through the trunk of the tree.

The thread of memories is a long earthworm,
crawling through the empty
corridors where once blood pulsed.
White bones remain still,
slowly dissolving into the vessel of eternal life:
Earth, water, air, lost particles of light,
and my longing for the final union.

Doubts hollow a chamber,
soft and warm – my new home.
When my dream ends,
I will dwell in it.

Now I am the pine.
My needles, bark, and resin
radiate invisible light
for this space, for this world.

Yes, I was once human.