The Neurotic Dreams September in April
Already I have become the beginning of a partial ghost, sleeping the summer
sleep in winter, choosing night over breakfast and the ritual of dousing lights.
This much I know: the moon returns each month, and tonight you lie awake
in a bed across the river, in a house with sixteen windows and a cold oven,
where your true name hides under the floorboard behind the pantry door.
*
Differences season our days — from flowers to snow, root to nectar — take
one and the other lessens in its own sight. One day I’ll overcome this longing
for things and will be complete in what I own, living my life beyond the page,
past the white space and dead letters. When I mention hearts, I mean that
muscle lodged in my chest. Genetics, not romance. Tissue. Arteries, veins.
*
Dark cars on the street. Cattle grazing in the damp pasture. The liquor store
sign glaring “CLOSED.” Separate yet included, we observed these scenes but
assigned them to the periphery, grounded in our own closed frames. In a
different time I would transcend my nature and strive to withstand yours.
Look. That star, the fog silhouetting the tombstones. A bobbing light.
*
Love is a gray morning, a steel-toed shoe or coating of black ice; nothing you
do will repeal its treachery. There, on my stone porch, I will inhale the smoke
of a thousand burned photographs. The sun will descend but you won’t share
it, and I’ll no longer hum your tune. When I rise no one sees. Or everyone
stares. Imagine that great cow of a moon lowing through the night.
“The Neurotic Dreams September in April” was published in deLuge in December 2016, and was written during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge. Many thanks to artist extraordinaire Ron Throop for sponsoring and providing the title.
😮
This is heartbreakingly gorgeous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ron Throop’s title inspired me!
LikeLike
“Imagine that great cow of a moon”… what a brilliant line!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Daniel. The moon is always giving!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You snagged me (unintentionally, I’m sure) with “In a different time I would transcend my nature and strive to withstand yours.” Hits home … people who stick together in spite of feeling this way can, with time, discover their natures have managed to balance out. I suspect this segment is intended somber … but looking back from the far end of the spectrum, I’m smiling.
I love the title and its possible implications … sleeping through an entire too-hot Texas summer? Need not be neurotic to dream such.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The title really got me going, and then I pictured a house… It’s one of those poems that never would have been written if not for the offered title.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mmm, I was not thinking “house” at all … even more fascinating from that perspective.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, then the house became inhabited, and words tumbled out.
LikeLiked by 1 person