Art by Kate Shaw

 

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in search of clarity , a definitive all caps nope is preferable 

to the conceptual form of you who sleeps with people posthumously. 

 

the you that goes to bed as a one & then wakes up more as a zero . 

that you , but in reverse .  more absence than presence .         

 

 in your dreams you’re you ,  but the B side written in code .  

 

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encoded in a forest there’s an embedded lake . sometimes 

you bring me to the edge & then walk away . i fall in . 

 

like rain that comes just before disappearing into the woods , it’s case by case .  

every forest is its own thing . every forest does it’s own thinking . 

 

sometimes splitting it’s trees like wishbones or tuning forks.

 

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it feels like the splitting is an ok thing because we have the feeling 

that it is . & then , when we don’t it isn’t . overnight , encased by nightfall , 

 

the trees & lake bear witness to an ancient dream & a mass grave .                          

 

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i am only one mirror , you say , & the middle of the lake is a different point of view. 

 

this, i say , is what happens when you don’t pay attention to your horoscope .           

 

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when you speak you have something that resembles a lisp but isn’t 

an impediment . you have something like knotted sinew webbing laced 

across your gums & molars & the oracular caverns of your oral history . it catches dreams . 

 

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a dreamcatcher replete with feathers & plastic beads filters the inverse of necessity . 

you find yourself catching nothing but a sometimes mirrored lake reflecting trees & light ,  

 

filtering spirit / memory / time — the composites of dreaming .                               

 

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i come back to bed in the mornings to dream in your dreams .  sometimes                             

i’m still dreaming you & you are sometimes still dreaming me , but in reverse .            

 

light . lake . trees . rain .  

 

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the light is softer when you change the filter . 

i am a lake in the forest doing my own thing , thinking 

 

about your mirrored presence & then , like light , i disappear in the trees .

 

 

Razielle is a Montreal-born writer and artist with a B.A. in History and Contemporary Studies from Dalhousie/King’s University, and is an alumna of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Sewer Lid, my writing day, Bad Dog Review, Fresh Voices, Five:2:One, Synapse, California Quarterly, and elsewhere. Website:  razielleaigen.com