On Memory & Dreams

You used to be bubbly in my nose:
a giggle contorted into a laugh,
my cheeks pink
from it.

I haven't yet decided why we write about nostalgia.

Either we haven't accepted the present.
Or we have not let go of

candy-coated ice cream crunching beyond the brain freeze.

I remember: in college you told me not to smile.

Your photograph forever sepia because you are always yesterday.

I consistently forget tomorrow.


This feels like hope but it drowns in the city surrounding:
I don't know you.

You, city: gray-faced and hostile stare into my bedroom window.
You pull the trigger and another is dead on our front porch.

And I say our but there is only me.
My bed is a twin. There is one toothbrush by the sink.

The new blood stains my shoes and is washed away in your rain.


This, God, is someone else. This is a passerby in my fingerprint.
I am better for it. You remind me to cry. Our eyelids are white.

I can see the veins in Your forehead.
You draw me a map.