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