When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth.
When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.
-Dylan

Strike through the mask.
-Melville

Diagnosis [Series of dreams 2]

For years I tried on my father’s face but it never fit.
I did not know how many faces I had left when the word

Found its way through the eye holes
And I saw the future blink back

As if it were the one surprised, as if
It were anything more than the grit of time

In a tear. My mother had vision, my dad had clarity
Like a pair of glasses you forget is there

Because to see the thing that made it clear
You’d have to give back what felt like yours

All along. Seven years after she left
The surface of the world my mother died,

The one who’d told me the only time she…