Do not wake me – as i walk the knife edge
of a clear desperate dreamless night

If I am lost – let me be lost alone
with bleeding feet and the laughter of gulls

If I am found – let me be the sweet nothingness
where the emptiness becomes me most of all

You are no more keeper of the shadow than I –
so close your eyes, hold my hand, let us walk away

The wind will reveal us quite enough – summer, if it comes
at all – will come with rage and kumquats

The heat is not hot, it is the memory of the cold
That leaves us most burnt.

As you shake me, I hear your voice, “Wake up
Wake up, it’s just a dream”

I smell your breath, thick with morning and bad decisions,
“No. There is no Just, in a dream.”

You do not laugh, or even smile, as I roll back over
in hopes of finding another delicious kumquat
or some other answer to a question I can not ask.