Day Twenty

Title: i wanted to stop dreaming about him

A new direction, maybe. Just playing around.

This line comes from a sequence of dream poems I wrote this last spring. I often dream in cycles, with the same cast of characters showing up again and again. The dreams come in two or threes or fours. And they are never light dreams, never the kind that float away with the alarm.

For a long time, I used to dream about this boy that I loved. Even after we'd stopped talking. Even after years and years of silence. He'd just show up for a week or two in my dreams, and then he'd disappear.

This poem is not quite a dream, though it goes with the dream sequence. It is about that boy. About a letter of apology he wrote to me at the end of our tragedy.

***

Dream I haven’t had yet

There is a letter
six pages long,
at the bottom of the Pacific.
At the bottom of the cliffs.

I believe
he meant for me to keep it.
It was an apology.
It was so many years.
It was all green and blue.

I didn’t want it.

I wanted to stop dreaming about him.