closerbyfar:

i had a dream last night that i was running down the crumbling steps of an abandoned subway station, and in blue graffiti on the flat gray walls were a thousand of your poems, and in the dream, at least, some of them were for me.

the sun was going down. i was late for a wedding, or a funeral- i didn’t know which- and a stern man in a slim black suit was shouting down at me from the street, “hurry! no one’s going to wait for you, and you don’t know the address.” but i kept leaving things on the marble benches of the platform, my coat or my heels or my notebook, and running back down to get them, and when i did, i’d find myself reading the walls again.

some of the poems i knew and some of them i didn’t. in the fading light they rearranged themselves into new shapes, in your slender slanting hand, and on the steps were things like “whales sing because / they remember the future,” and “is the bed on fire?,” and “dear jess: i couldn’t stop thinking of you.”

back above ground: my best friend walking, windswept, across a nearly-empty parking lot. he looks at me and says “i waited, but i guess i don’t know the address, either.” i tell him i want to talk about memory but he interrupts, says he tried to take my picture, but i don’t show up on camera. he says it’s because i’m such a coward that even my shadow wouldn’t stay with him. and i want to argue, or hug him, or cry, except you’re there, suddenly, leaning on the tailgate of my ex-girlfriend’s subaru, and you are smoking a cigarette and fiddling with your glasses and smiling.

“how does it feel?” i asked. “being dead, i mean.”

you shrugged. “your guess is as good as mine.”

“is it at all like being a flower?”

you laughed. “sure, but quieter, and less wet.”