different promises for the same vows

"Sweet dreams,"
My parents would say before we went to bed.

If only.
For my dreams
Were nightmares
Grotesque, twisted monsters
Would run after me
In a dimly-lit forest
Only to have
A car come by suddenly
And run over me
Causing my organs to burst
And blood to stain the ground.

They said,
"May your dreams come true!"
Forgetting that
Nightmares
Were dreams too.

do we have to die in order to have lived

i cried a tale
a feverish tale

of demons on tables and babies in glasses

of faces on floors
and portraits of lovers etched on doors

of gap-toothed beggars with golden teeth

of priests bending over with no god to please

i sang and sang
of bodiless faces

faces that went to faraway places
(i lost five tears to a man with four faces)

i sang and sang
of a princess with no womb
who ran to a juliet
buried deep in a tomb

when we reminisce about our childhoods
we laugh at the lies
the kind of lies we don't fully regret
but there is one lie that is just too cruel for me to forget
it wasn't curiousity  that killed the cat
it was the hand that trapped it in an airtight bag