you are pale in the half-light;
all the fire you carry with you in the waking world is doused in the sweetness of your hair across the pillow & your frame insinuating itself in the sheets, in pockets of weight & pools of shadow that say "i am a body", "i am a girl"
(vulnerable yet terrifying)
& in life you are larger than you seem, thunder & lightning inside colored glass. you are cruel-mouthed but soft-eyed, & brittle queen (you would rather break than bend for me), you are all the lovelier for your frail-boned pride.
it is strange how much i see of you when you are not looking back, how i feel as though it is only in moments like these (in not-quite-daylight, in dreaming) that we are truly at peace. for is it not that our natures may be likened to those of sea & sky? were we not born to crash & storm & shriek & boil against one another? (what is the nature of the place where we meet? for i do not believe in the horizon; blue on blue, it can only be an illusion. the sky is endless, the sea is endless, &, awake, we will never see the sun, & we will never truly touch)
& if only you were to stay dreaming, maybe it would not have to be so, but the light is never 5 o' clock blue for long,
& then your lashes flutter & your breathing quickens (& the people at the seaside, oh, how they quake) &
you open your eyes.






















