i dreamt of you last night, or was it this morning,

one of those dreams where people don't look like themselves, but

somehow your mind knows

the identity of every faceless vision.

we were sitting around a table eating or at least i was eating, you were reading

and i thought, how brave to read with so little time left.

what if you never reach the ending?

and i feel guilty for disturbing your reading with the suggestion we play a game, a card game, a stupid game, touched with dignity only by its finality. so i run to get the props for our game and the dreaming me is acting alone--

some path, some mission on which

i can only follow

her, i

can't assist in carrying the hopeful object she offers to you as gifts. one of them i see clearly, it is a soft stuffed animal from sesame street-- elmo, i believe -- and so i sigh because he is not a true character, came too late to reach me.

and while she moves i see her talking to another faceless name, about you,

about how strong you are to be so close to the end and content to sit at a kitchen table

and read.

then as she reaches you

with an offering, i wake, temporarily forgetting you are gone;

i still see you with a hand bookmarking the pages--twenty are left.

i promise to finish that book if you can't.

this is what happens when you give in to a restless sleep, leaving twenty pages remaining for morning.

circa. early 1995. athena.

on.

back.