Naked with Strangers

A pity it is. These songs in my head. No one can hear. Nervous pendulums at the mercy of fetid clocks. Teddy bears with all their buttons undone. Pasting dying flowers onto crumbling walls.

I woke up so many times. But the dream would always resume. Underground. Trying to remember the sky. the scrape of dandelions as I would try to breathe.

It's much too long a journey from here to there. The apple on its tree ripe with temptation. We can't go yet, I tried to warn him. It was much too soon. To pilot all those oceans away from the moon.

I'm just the child in her sleep. Turning over with her angry dreams. I'm just that pen running out of ink. Kittens' claws on their mother's teats. Piercing the milk from her belly.

We went to bed. Trying to pretend we'd never been. We closed our eyea. Speculating. Small hammers negotiating fingers. She put her lips on the same as she always had. But this time, they didn't fit.

So she kissed him goodbye. As if they had never met.