Crossing

What could I say when you asked what made me startle in the night, what made me throw off the makeshift quilts you pieced together of touch, so I could sleep? In the old days, dreams were more than just dreams: they were portents, omens, doorways creaking open into the unknown-becoming-known. In the stories there are always doors. There is always someone saying Choose, and there is always someone either walking into the maw of a hungry beast ready to flay her alive, or into a garden hung with scent, fruit bending, glamorous as comets festooned to branches. Who is to say which choice brings sudden death, which one turns on a flood of unending light or sets the stars careening across the sky? A breeze unleashes a shower of petals and they fall upon the ground. And even the leaves— one side yellow, one side green— act like hinges: tell me what their veined surfaces say before the heart swings open and collects them for the afterward.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

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