2:14 am
on my aunt's deck
that juts out from the top of her tiny one-person, acid-green kitchen
I am sitting, with my knees up, on the sun lounger parallel to the inlet
that parts the city I am most in love with in half, it blushes, it winks at me
its yellow heartbeat, its moaning siren, its starry reflection
my skin tells me blue, my chin points up
between me and the moon, black cotton walking some old track
on the empty parts I can feel the water in me, tide
crashing into the shores of my bones,
like a million angry prisoners in a cell that no one watches
I night-dream about if I were a foot traveler,
traversing the world when she was innocent,
coming onto such a beautiful sight... an alien glow
concentrated in the center, growing outwards
like a starburst or a flower, or a nerve cell or a feeling
and a low rumble of life vibrating the edges
it smells like home and wildness and autumn as a baby.
I night-dream a doe, looking at me straight in the eye, strong-willed
is climbing up the balcony's blue wooden steps,
never breaking gaze, slow and powerful,
I open the screen door for her without question and
she walks in, she doesn't look around.
cautious, a thing made of beauty,
in this funny old house.
she climbs the stairs, chin pointed at the slanted ceiling,
places her hooves gently on the carpet as she floats down the hall,
she curls up in my bed.
I curl around her.
she's gone when I wake up.