When you are not dead
my dreams are in color.
You laugh into my sleep
with the blue melody of skin,
of sky. This is not a love
letter: Elegies are for ideas
as well as for lovers.
You have been an idea
waiting to be articulated
all these years.
You are an essay
on brown paper
written with matchsticks.
We say fire. We want
to say failure.
In one dream, you speak
from a podium in a blue
haze classroom. My hand
eternally raised toward you,
a severed wing.
Sometimes I wake to the song
of your name. A rock dove’s
nocturnal whisper. Your breath
mimics a crow’s.
When you leave, I find
feathers written into the sheets.
Photo by Danny Chapman
