Born

Again are the days that we’ve dyed in the magenta’s that turn brown upon their being
draped to dry in the sun, the cacti fruit juices of Philo and that burning drive to hang our freshly shed skins.

When I am in dream, and there are these scenes, that seem so blasé’ to the one who is still half asleep, the one who deems dreams not journal-page worthy, would just as soon pull on the rose-print stretch pants and tennis shoes--quicker to finish the time on the tread,

but still, I did, pulled something soft and wet from the night and in frayed felt-tipped black scrawl laid it like wet meconium across the expanse of an off-white page.

Someone sat beneath my backside, pulling and pulling on rowing machine ropes and I felt some subliminal sex scene and so that is when I went back into the dream, in my focus of NOW,

into my legs on incline fire, to that presence that seemed a man I’d found and wanted to wake up after the other I’d last known had blown smoke in my face after my quitting.

And, it was he, soft, strawberry-blonde who woke easily, we put our heads together in that just waking room and smiled, sun pushing to beam through the heavy of LA, seventies, yellow mustard curtains, white sheets and the warm, yeasty matching wheat-bedspread, a womb of safety, a place of languishing, labial love.

Photo Credit: Dan Farrell/unsplash