Dreams Are Elephants

I am not dreaming.
This road is real
and I am real
and you are real.
You lean so smooth against
the air around you
but your hands are shaking
and you look away.
I am not dreaming.
The breeze ruffles your hair
the way I used to do,
coaxing you in.
I am here!
Your jaw is tight and I
hear gravel crunch
while you shift
foot to foot.
This road is real and
I am
real and you
are real
and you are coming for me.
I am not dreaming.
We are here.
This sun is just another star,
the earth bends
beneath our waiting,
wanting, tensing muscles.
We're speckled in
golden dust from
fallen leaves.
October leaves,
these skeletons rattling
at your feet --they are real.

And you see me.

Eyes.
Those-those are real,
glass marbles,
the prize pick of a child's game,
circles drawn in bronze skin,
pools of blue marble
seeing me,
recognizing the lines here--
here beneath my eyes
and around the corners of
my mouth,
you see them.
I am not dreaming.
Dreams are never this sweet.

Humid summer wind carries
caramel voices to me:
your sounds, your laughs, your sighs,
and I am not dreaming.
Dreams couldn't be this cruel.
Dreams couldn't torture me.
We are standing in panhandle desert.
You are real,
I am real,
the wind that whips our clothes
about our skin
is real.
I watch you from just a few
simple footsteps away
through a cloud of dust and grit.
I taste dirt in my teeth
and the reverberations of a heart
that hasn't beat in so long.
I am not dreaming.
My hands are shaking too.
Look, mine are shaking too.
Look, look.
These hands are real, feel them!
I am not dreaming!
I am staring.
I am hardly breathing.
I am clinging
to you.
I will not wake this time.
God, leave me here
this time.
I am not dreaming.