The things I have dreamed
never really meaned
that I felt anything...
eyes and faces and what was
flesh colored
and what was white,
the snakes that I dreamed of
in the darkness, the night
was a sweat
but I would never forget
that the morning would come
and my eyes would be open
and the visions I'd seen
did not really mean
that I thought anymore
or any less of you.

I would dream of a snake
and the morning would wake me
and I'd stare with the shame
that I should feel that my name
was given to me by a man I would
feel so afraid of
but in the morning you were never entirely
made of
what I'd dreamed you had been,
jade scales
and sharp teeth,
but was that what was beneath
all the
love that was inside
with my eyes open wide?

I would dream that your face
could be opened up and replaced
by the face of a stranger
by the face of a monster
and one who I ran from,
oh husband, I am so fearful of
finding that you
arent really beside me,
when I wake in the blackness
that swallows the reminder
of the dreams I've been dreaming...

I would dream that you left me,
alone and bereft and be
somewhere in shadows,
be somewhere
and who knows
when you would come back
to gather your lover,
I'd search and I'd scream and then I'd discover
that you'd gone off in anger
because I had hurt you, you'd turn it around
and say I would desert you
when you needed me most
but I'd tremble and cry and my tears wouldnt
move you
and I thought I could see through you
you'd turned into a ghost
and you couldnt feel me...
you couldnt believe that this substance
was really
the real me, not really...
I'd try to touch you, I'd touch
and it would all feel so much
as if you'd turned
cold against me,
even your eyes were cement,
and I'd see
that your love
was as hard and ungiving
as any person I'd known, the ghosts or the living...

then my eyes would break open,
the room wasnt familiar
and I tried to place it
I tried to remake the
angles into something
where I could put my feet down.
This town,
which is it? have I been here? I'd remember
the places I'd lived in,
the rooms that I'd been in
till at last my mind settled
on one location
and I reach out for my husband
just to see if I could find him...

11/13/2008

Posted on 11/13/2008
Copyright © 2024 Vikki Owens