I’ve just awoken from a land of dreams;
Now this world isn’t as real as it seemed.
I closed my eyes
Hoping you would disappear,
And now I wonder if you were ever really there.
Peering into a mirror,
I stretch my hands on the glass and fall through;
The raindrops that land on my tongue
taste like the dust of old Hollywood movies;
Your skin is cold,
like shopping mall mannequins,
marred and chipped by years of pretending.
The grass is not green,
But purple and orange;
The people here don’t smile,
They stare straight ahead trying to suppress their sorrow.
Cows fly upside-down on the left side of the road,
Blocking traffic,
Killing time.
Snowflakes fall and in them I see not our laughter
But the burning ice of that winter day.
Outside my window, a man beckons to me;
He says that if I try hard enough I can forget;
He says that if I pretend, someday I will believe my own lies.
Somewhere a crimson raven caws;
Somewhere a cyan ghost whispers to his blushing bride;
A gypsy woman cries the tears I cannot muster-
She is gripped by the terror and pain I have tried to hide.
But now I see you,
Vaulted in the midnight sky,
Staring at me as if I am not real;
Melted clocks cannot erase the time I wasted,
But they can blur the reminiscences that swarm my brain.
Flashes of lightning glare my vision,
All I can see are our memories,
Vivid and warm and terrifying.
I am screaming and tumbling down towards hell,
Curled as to guard myself from your shiny claws.
But it is you I cannot escape;
You who haunts my dreams and wakes me in the night.
I feel the prick of a crystal cactus’s spines,
Sharp and numbing,
As the man from my window calls to me to follow him.
Do I believe him now that the past is better made fiction?
Is it time for me to wake up,
And realize my demons exist only in night terrors?
Propelled towards consciousness,
Pink feathers and copper sphinxes blot my revelation;
Gold hearts on chains and red plastic benches are all I can remember.
Or possibly, the smell of shoe polish and leather soles,
Dancing fingers and tip-toes;
Grown-ups falling from windows as they scold our kisses…
Back on the other side,
I stare into the mirror.
To the man outside my window,
“Maybe my life really is but a dream.”