Sometimes in sleep we join

sea air fills my head 

as the voices drift up from the courtyard …. 

I say to ambush …. 

voices linger across the currency ….strategies and plans spoken and hatched…. 

someone else says, 

surprise attack….

Only I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to go chasing some evil demon….don’t want him to—fear—tempting fate ….and watching the sea as it drugs the mind with its hypnotic rhythm; how it pulls and tugs….you back…. on its currents; ever forward its encroachment onto the temporal earth; pulling away to sink and drown its sandy flesh, leaving behind skeletal shells that fossilize 

….we are all fossils, dust

but we are more than this, 

more, much more, than flesh, 

     more 

          even 

              than ashes

                   and dust….

                       more, 

                           much more too….

                                than de roet 

he says it is ‘to heal….’

I forget myself…. the limitations of the human mind that conflict within but it is so easy to give in to

How I have searched and longed for, in truth 

—why I have avoided anyone getting too close

this bond. It cannot be broken. not even by lifetimes. Still it keeps me

like that first moment when I first saw him…. It was something in just his walk

I recognized….

the way he moved ….

how his hair caught on the breeze ….the hut with the deep fire pit; the beat of metal against metal; the symphony 

“Tell me why you stay,” he says pressing himself deeply within ….as thought and words are like tedious knots; booby traps, confusing and causing any ability to process to malfunction 

“Tell me,” he says and withholds himself and his motions

But dream takes over, and I watch the shadows on the wall…. and listen to the pounding of the piano keys ….his opera that plays in my mind as I press to him mimicking his motions —and with it, it naturally comes, this urgent need wrap around him, to press to hard to him as I say,

“no,” as I do this

but he does not move at all

“….please….” pressing to him

Only he repeats,

“tell me why you stay,” still holding back

“Please….” I say, and whisper,  “don’t go with the others—promise you will stay here, I don’t trust the others!”

“Stay where—here? The others, duva?”

“Yes, please! don’t make me wait….”

he says,

“wait for what?”

“The sun, you said! Don’t make me wait!”

“Duva….?” he says with a jab in a whisper, sinking deep, pressing 

“don’t leave…. promise me! Don’t leave here alone, please!” but all thoughts dissolve, overcome by the fluidity of his moves 

I hardly hear him say,

“no, never again, duva! I promise —not, never again….”

but I do hear ….as it echoes in the morning in my mind 

…..upon waking