Fog (9/2020)

Once I had a dream about this beautiful person who took my hand

& led me through a garden with lemon trees arching above us,

paving way to a sunny spot under the sky. I never knew him, or maybe

I did at one point. You can never know if you know someone

or if they’re bleeding into someone else you thought you knew. His eyes

were escaping mine & melting into the billion other faces

I’ve known before, all the while, his palms against mine. The cement,

cracking underneath, mended whole with our feet, walking,

& somehow everything feels so temporary: daytime, his touch fading

as I wake at night, our footsteps muffled silent under my pillow.

Me, peering into his pupils, like wells. & down there it was so dark

& miserable that I never wanted to fall back in the dream

so I pressed my thumb against his cornea instead & blinded him. Then

I woke to a foggier sky. His foggier eyes. All of it, fading.