“Dreaming State”

In my dreams you are you but not entirely you.

Walking unaware into dangers that could only transpire in dreams,

Laughing over your shoulder at my terror,

Enduring unspeakable things, my deepest fears realized in sleep.

In my dreams I fail you in a myriad ways,

My shame carrying over into wakefulness,

Your morning cheer replacing my morbid conjurings,

Your beak of a nose upturned for a kiss.

Only you could make a rude awakening seem like a new beginning,

Only you could demand that endless love so fearlessly,

Only you could meet an ambivalent world with a searching embrace.

In my dreams you are sometimes my older child, sometimes a wise man,

Or sometimes you say preposterous things,

Showing off for the reward of the lovelight in my eyes.

But mostly, in my dreams, you are just you being you.

Rejecting all notions of disability, laughing at passing shadows,

Eager for more life, more world, more eyes to smile into,

The presence of speech a careless gesture of generosity

Dreamed up by my foolish, craving heart,

To assuage the mystery that will lie between us forever.

Radha.