Eight poems about the same man.

1.

I dreamt of you last night, finally, after so many months gone.

You are happy, entertained, doing the same things.

You played,

and your music sounded different. 

Just beats, needs layers. 

I never heard your voice.

We spent the whole day together. 

You showed me your room and met my drunken boyfriend. 

I wore your girlfriend’s coat. 

I never saw your face.

You were looking down, away,

avoiding contact with your eyes or mine in the mirror. 

I knew your gaze would be gray and blue, the depths of a sea so far from the shore. 

Your cheeks would be warm and golden, rays dancing on freckles. 

Everything would say lost and finding. 

I would be too curious, 

It would all be too obvious.

Instead, I turn to face the horizon, no more and no less vast.

I left you on the Coast with no map in hand. 

I have been walking this world searching for what comes after you.

2.

Again, I dreamt of you.

Your sandy-haired son waddled up to me 

off-kilter and giggling, 

greeted me with a two-toothed smile 

and a hug. 

Laughter filled liminal space, 

Evidence of your path unfolding beyond me. 

With the passing of time and good intention, 

We mend.

3.

Not this time, no no ..

. Chaos. Unclean.

Romance, knotted bodies. Intimacy (unlike before). 

It’s been a long time since the feeling of you crossed my mind. 

Even before it’s over, I shame. I blame. 

Not you, though. I blame me. 

I hear an echo of voices around us saying  

no, no, 

YOU left, no. Move. 

They’re shouting. 

Not at you, though. At me.

Fear and pleasure leave me trembling, 

I’m repulsed by both. 

Afterward, I hide in the closet, 

I lie on top of her shoes in the shadows behind jackets. 

I’m suffocating so I exit.

I pass her in the hallway. 

She looks directly at me. 

She looks directly through me. 

I am a ghost.

There is a hole in me the exact size of you.

It goes on further than the naked eye can see.

Will we ever be free?

4.

(Many months have passed, maybe even a year)

I still dream of you all the time,

But it doesn’t jolt me like it used to.

It’s no longer a shock to my system 

wondering why you visit me in one world 

when you evade me in the other.

The dream world is your world, 

it’s the space you yearn for, 

and the place where I am obliged to meet you

because this mud and grass planet is 

too solid, 

too dense, 

too biological 

for such a delicate person. 

I will meet you in the myst. 

I will visit. 

5.

Oct. 19

Otra vez, en Costa Rica, estuviste en mis sueños.

It’s always warm where you are. I appreciate that.

Sometimes I fear 

you will fade

once and for all 

and live with both feet 

in your new world,

and me in mine.

There's no way of knowing

if last night was your final visit.

When that fateful sun rises,

I will miss you. 

I do.

6.

In Puerto Rico

You travel to me in waves

Of humid wind and salt.

You always visit when I’m South.

I’ve been sighting God

in back-to-back moments in Ceiba. 

There is no try, 

no reaching whatsoever, for Him. 

He’s ever-present, undeniably,

imago.

We shared God like we shared everything

(except the thing you hid from me).

When I slipped away, you got the better half of God.

You needed Him more than I did during those midwestern, August days

as we sloughed off the skin of our life together. 

Meanwhile, God’s long-casted shadow followed me

to the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada

where my lights went out and my color faded.

Living became so dense and dark,

I could not see my own hands as they waved in front of my face. 

I sat in Vipassana and wondered if I would ever see again. 

I sat in my home and wondered if I would ever breathe again. 

I sat in my mind and wondered if I would ever love again. 

I cried out to the god who was on your team and heard echoes. 

I wrote a note on a napkin during those quarantine days that spanned years. It read:

What if the emptiness gets so hollow that I become the world’s largest cave? 

Can I possibly envelop Mother Earth herself and swallow the show of humanity whole?

Will the emptiness fill then? Will it end?

Surely, this world would give me stomach pains. 

7.

He is fully here now, intact, and lifting the weight from my chest. 

It must have been my begging which led to openness which led to stillness. 

I ask for a peaceful heart.

God never leaves / you leave God.

8. Does anybody eat in a dream?

I stranded you at the dinner table

where he sat instead.

My parents sat across from us. 

The restaurant was fake fancy:

the table cloth was too white and it was noisy.

Eating with him was awkward because of his wholeness. 

He did not need the food on his plate to fill him. 

If he needs nothing, how do I complete him?

I complete myself.