Phantom Eyes

It was a dream snuffed like other dreams  
— by a bulb circuit,    
   
left wading in a black lake where I was cradled    
by the imagination    
and dipping a foot to the circle ripple of the bank.    
   
The string at the nexus of shadow creased against the room temperature.    
It binded my finger with this hallucinogen ring    
   
that you had visited me    
from your long coast    
when I had taken my checkered quilt because now it is fall,    
and my blinks set heavier than in spring.    
   
I leaned in a bed above yours,    
words ricocheting off an unaware ceiling    
and bent over the rail — saw if you unwrapped them,    
   
then turned to me in fluttering seams of puffed cotton fabric    
haphazardly    
and falling in places    
(because our bodies were family and our blood — the same eighth note when we felt for the other's chest with whole fingers and palms).    
   
Your older sister opened the door on the conversation    
(our eyes closed, peering only by the light of warmth,    
mouths dropped down to a spirit flow)    
and accepted us just the way willow hoops accept the wind,    
   
somehow tossed from the cut mattresses onto the one nipply nylon floor    
curled into pressed foreheads    
along the dimple between the brows.

I dreamed a dream that was tropical
in mid-way October
and the chills in my muscles.

Thank you for giving that — this special thing to me

though I never met you again under open radiants.