Wake Me, Not

oh, love … do you still dream? pray so, find me here and haunt me - stab me with those beautiful, bloodless lies - I’ll believe it all … til waking there - I sit, toes in cold sand wishing on a gulf as wide as mortality Sol, bright as bright but no warmth only a brume of miracles puffed away by the chill breath of what’s real (and wild whispers, once yours) yet, here - I feel it all again … intensely as if these lifetimes had not passed as if your first smile “hello” had just found me speechless brown-eyed blonde magic turning me a child - splitting me like a log heart, no longer my own as true as truth when I’m in this fantasy’s meandering praying to slumber on beg, these soft petals of sleep’s flower do not shed for the thorns of the waking world where I can not speak your name or place my kiss upon your eyes or drown their diurnal dark oh, haunt me … my love. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, February 21, 2023