I Hope Nael Knows Their Poem Made Me Cry

nvmillustration

Dreams to have while walking home from the library

I read of mangroves, coastal forest far away protection against monsoons, a gnarled seawall –  nature standing up against its watery cousin who would sometimes threaten death when cousin cried and overflowed with tears.

But mangroves are far away, small black and white image printed on trees so far from arboreal, trunks whittled down and forced into a single, bleached dimension to serve such a purpose now as to show a photo of a mangrove.

Just as flat and white, but the moon seemed closer that night. Closer than mangroves and monsoons. Back down to this autumn scene, now the maples stand burning all crimson Maroon leaves.

Monsoon trees. There is life here and now, then there is life in pictures and words. Our minds catch both in one fell swoop and they dance together in their captive company, lightly stepping but sometimes intersecting in their closeness – the impossible twirling of stony boughs become a nest for the granite moon, immobile limbs graced with the agility of dreams. Fancy flying one thought to the other, closing the distance and realizing two worlds mingling in an elegant, chaotic embrace. Mangroves holding the harvest moon, from both the truth and I so far, but so beautiful.

My shrine to Memento Mori by rococobean

Care in their caress

through pain pricked fingers.

Love in the weaving

of comings and goings

Pas de deux He was a mortician. She was a seamstress. They wove stories of coming and going. All the unanswered, the unclaimed, the unknown became secondary. There was a lot of rain across a parched earth and they only saw relief of the end of a dance. But one dance leads on to another and another. The joy is in the twists, the dips always righted.

I never before felt this ache in my chest

when the lover on screen was found broken and dead.

But now

it's you. And it's me

in the story.

And when looking for death, there's no need to hurry.

My heart blocks my throat

I don't know what to do

Now the survivor is me

and the dead one is you.

There is no I.

am i the central nervous system? the brain, the skin, the eye? the microbiome in my gut, or stardust in the sky?

the soul (what soul?), the heart, the breath, the hormones in my blood? the shadows splashed on Plato's wall, the people that I love?

the clothes on my back, the name on ID, the carbon in my bones? the air i breathe unconsciously, the place that i call home?

or am i just the nowhere man, the woman so alone? i am the dreamer of the dream, the - I - in i don't know

alexander heir

And why?

the way ivan aivazovsky looks at the sea…i think…i think that’s what love looks like.