dreaming into death
prose poem pulled from a misty mind
the promise of seamlessness
like holding one’s breath before
ducking beneath a wave,
from air to water — seamless as if
all substances were as one
as if death were an ongoing condition,
a morphing as unremarkable as a
duckling shedding its down
an exchange of states,
minus transition
in the dream I begin fading
from color to gray,
my breathing slows;
I am calm, expectant —
awaiting a future foretold
I fully expect to cease,
my absence concretely inevitable
yet not-living is impossible,
beyond dreaming’s farthest reaches,
and like every dream,
the particulars recede to their own shores
of irrecoverable memory,
the dream no more capable of revealing
the final mystery
than death itself
I feel cheated.
Have you ever awoken from a dream, desperate to hold onto its message, yet all too quickly, the dream’s secrets fade from memory’s view? A recent vivid dream of my death ultimately pushed me away.
