The Gorgeous Dream

'If you must know anything,    
know that you were born    
 because no one else was coming'    
   
          - Ocean Vuong    
   
   
 ¡    
   
Flutterwings:    
you know you always escape a day    
we never made -- but how    
I would find you in every crushing second    
I wanted to die    
there, looking up at your dire ascent from    
these clouds billowing above where I lie;    
Stay.    
   
¡    
   
I never caught you still but blurry;    
lines faded against the backdrop sky,    
your flashing glance enrobing my horror    
of imagining you blown aloft    
after gently unfolding -- love    
can be that way.    
   
¡    
   
I'm too immature to fly    
like you, rapid fire, the bullet-    
laden sky is what I shrink from.    
   
Sky falling; pale-honey, oozing.    
     
I cannot reach you, of that    
I can be sure; thin air consumes me --    
how is it that you are immune to greatest    
heights and folly and every glimpse of    
Heaven which illumimates a real hell.    
How can every storm which propels    
you away be your salvation?    
   
¡    
   
I wonder, shall I become the next genesis    
of this or a tempest which lifts    
the gorgeous dream of us only to jettison it away?    
Your wing-smack is silent, but my throat    
cannot be.    
Love in flight can be that way.    
I hear it blowing up -- my inner demolition:    
I try to fly.    
   
¡    
   
Why, every time you can't hear me,    
in the grasses you breed and brood    
in a dense cocoon I can't permeate    
under a sun I wanted to become    
so I could read you:    
each color-speck a word; unintelligible,    
flapping in repetition, garbled.    
   
I didn't want to learn this way, I wanted    
to unlearn your language --    
I wanted to say, lets just run    
away: sky caving in    
on a cataclysm of our destiny,    
our outcome    
where we become the plans    
we lay, prepare for
indubitably.    
   
¡    
   
One day, a friend and I, we ran    
so hard our clothes fell off --    
I forgot who came first when I wanted    
to wear yours.    
I forgot who, between us was more    
beautiful; that I never was, but you    
were.    
How can a person in constant motion    
and recession from view not be?    
   
¡    
   
I see it becoming a speck    
of who I was yesterday:    
today, I am more like you    
but in flight, not still;    
yellow-wings framed in black,    
streetcorner walker, flier,    
flower with no name.    
Unless the name is promise, I won't    
try to translate it.    
   
¡    
   
I won't give it my own name, that way    
it will burn to nothing as it    
withers and fades --    
it will be what we, alone remember,    
nothing else, and it will eat    
its own words like a moth eats    
its cocoon so it can fly to free    
itself.    
   
I behold the terror of freedom    
and forget why love must endure this    
to approach itself.    
   
An event horizon:  letting go.    
   
      .....