I don't want to be a survivor, I don't want to be brave

I don't want to be stronger, I don't want to be saved

I don't want to be tested to see if I'll do it right

I don't want your God to use me to fix your broken life.

I thought I liked the way you held your head,

it was casual and sincere,

not unlike the way you smiled.

But this was different from your smile…

There was something else to it,

something I didn’t notice before. 

Perhaps I daydreamed too much 

or imagined too little,

but I did notice,

as I pretended not to notice. 

Your eyes were down 

but I saw you glance up

once or twice. 

Your hand was on the cup 

that you swore you’d never sip from.

I know now that you were breaking 

but I didn’t know it then.  

I thought I liked the way you held your head; 

I thought there was some sort of beauty in the tragedy.

There was no beauty.

There was no beauty.

You slid me a pencil,

an old wooden kind,

and told me to write a story on my napkin. 

I wrote about Jesus and slid them both back.

You burned the napkin

with your cigarette lighter 

and pocketed the pencil. 

Then you lit one up 

and spun to face me. 

Your eyes were blue,

mine were green, 

but your oceans were all dried up 

while my forest stayed in spring. 

You said “You don’t smile enough”

Breathing out a swirling smoke, 

as you sat cross-legged on the barstool. 

I in reply grinned poorly

and turned away. 

I assumed you turned away also. 

I soon grabbed my coat

and began to shuffle out the door. 

I looked back,

your head was in that way I thought I liked. 

I watched as you blew a smoke ring up to heaven;

It made a halo.   

I walked out

and you never shed another tear on my behalf. 

Dreaming

Like floating

In the impossible abyss of unknown.

Subconscious

Becomes conscious

Becomes something

Not quite reality

Not quite not reality.

Dreams are an in between

An invisible world

The gray world that belongs to you.

Why do we dream?

Does it mean something?

Like stress, translating into your dreams where you're late for a meeting?

Or anger, where you dream of betrayal?

Or sadness, where you dream of a forgotten blue world?

Or even the dreams of the book you're reading, with twists and turns and not-quite-characters?

And then the vivid dreams

The ones you can't forget

When you wake groggily with sleep inertia and curse your alarm

And forget

The dream you had last night.

And then someone

Says something

They said in your dream.

Then it all comes crashing back;

Every

              Little

                             Detail

And for me, these vivid dreams

Are the worst of all;

They could be so real

They feel so real

But they aren't

But I wish they were

But I wish they weren't

Leaving me with a muddled sense of reality

Not sure what is, what was, what could be.

Dreams

Twisting everything

Into sharp shards and even sharper shadows

Wet lightning and dry rain

Upside-down clouds and talking animals

Book characters come to life

The impossible, possible

The improbable, probable.

I like dreams

Because while you can't control them

They are the adventure

The nighttime adventure

The fun and crazy and spontaneous and weird

And none of it makes sense.

That's the point.