These are the dreams that break us

I took the greyhound down empty
and thought
there's no way I'm the only one leaving
this town today, no way
so much diesel, glass and
steel is moving just for me.
No way I can just
go,

but I did.

John said "It's all worked
out, we're saving cash already."
L.A.? I said. "No. New York,
we'll be there in
a year."

Two years and he's no
where still
of course,
we're all nowhere
still
of course.

Paul is twenty-four and
out of college;
already he discusses
lottery,
already he discusses
inheritance and
what he would build if a little
money
came
through.

I hope they all make New
York or better
but I'll take this nowhere
Minneapolis town.
They'll find out soon enough
there's nowhere any
where,
they'll find out soon enough
these dreams are dead
weight and
the water's
cold.

    - Growing I guess -

Sometimes she wakes up as someone different. She makes coffee and rubs the sleep from her creases and corners, tries to light a cigarette on the shaft of sunlight refracted through the wavy glass a the top of her kitchen window. Blinking her hair away from her eyes, she pieces together what bits of her feel altered, pulling burnt hairs and faded linen from the fire.

She remembers a blue bridesmaid's dress and a small house in a field. She remembers the feeling of having a second floor above her head in the kitchen and the creak and sway of the sycamore in a high wind. She remembers floating through the summer and sleeping through the winter, the windows rattling like the rafters of a church. She remembers thrown-together picnics and the texture of English leather in her hands.

It's not her life, not a life she recognizes as familiar but it is definitely a part of her, hiding behind the coffee and the faces on the milk carton. If it's a wish it's one from so long ago that it's been crated with the board games and garden tools still left at her parents' house out west.

Her LPs stayed there, too.
And her saddle.
And her father, buried so long ago that she remembers his illness over his touch, remembers the smaller and smaller houses in neighborhoods farther and farther from home.

She remembers this, peering at the chips missing from the rim of her mug as her coffee slowly lightens with cream.

Charred by uncaught falling stars,
Slipping, zipping far too fast,
We're left with marks from wounds from past.
The dreams that seemed our heart's desire
Have killed us now, left more than scars.

I watched a dream die today

yet I dared not reach out

to tell the grim reaper, 'Stop'.

Silently, the funeral proceeds.

Pushed along, my body listens and trudges on.

Reality imprisons more than just limbs

as keys are thrown into the sea

and the dirt covers the blinding white

of yet another coffin lid.

One day, though old and even more grey,

I shall return to scatter flowers over each grave

and, however slowly, forge my own keys

to unlock more than just chains.