--YOU WANT THINGAMAJIG’S?  I GOT TWENTY…

I had a dream that the ocean moved in next door and you were there, a little shy, yet unbridled as usual, your hair a seaweed masterpiece or metaphor, clamshells for earrings, pearls drooped dot-dot-dot around your speckled suspect chest, fish swiftly swimming in and out of your ears like cartoon thought balloons where the words are not entirely legible.  It was a dream I kept falling back into, like a welcome trapdoor, springing open on repeat, on repeat, on repeat.

My God, everything felt so real, like the slow lick of your tongue up and down my neck, moist as the morning dew, warm as a fresh cup of coffee, nothing at all bitter about it, the acid having moved elsewhere.

There’s nobody here but you, head tossed back on a feather pillow, stitching your crazy dreams together, making me wait a few more hours to hear of them, decipher them, under the daybed clouds which lurk low in the sky as the sun elbows through the rush, telling its neighbor, the Sky, “Just look at them, will you?  Just look at them, for God’s sake.”

Oh, that pigeon today, so impossibly uncertain, so unsteady yet light, its poor bones constructed of air, pecking at a shallow splash of water as if that was life, the answer, all the while gleaming against the glare like the colors of gasoline spilled in water—pink and moss, fuchsia and deep purple.  When I said, “Hey there,” it batted and pecked like an angry chef, but paused to blow me a kiss before flying off.