What Was

She remembers
creeping from the crisp
sheets, the frozen air
conditioning he demanded
after the first late spring day,
edging one foot
before the other
and so past his door,
the dark so dense it caught
in her throat, pounded her heart
then slipping freely
into the sodden grass,
between the dazzling joy
of the twirling stars
and the warm embrace
of the sweet earth.

History, yours, mine, even
the whole of existence
is a matter of faith.
Believing is seeing
and in the vision we create
a faith in something more
than the one consciousness,
the one life.

You can see it
in the way a child
clutches her doll or bear,
the tender way she cuddles it,
or purposely brushes her cheek
on the apple blossoms unconsciously
seeking some warm request
to join the communal
dream of life.

Maybe she will find herself
standing on the sharp edge
of a rocky cliff, menacing
as the beast she remembers
restlessly scratching in the closet,
perched unsteadily
above the impartial bay.

Or maybe she will remember
why she crept into the orchard
well after midnight
time and again under the stars,
maybe she remembers
it was more than the scent
of the sweet apple or the cricket song,
too weary to start again
or find some other way around
maybe she surrenders,
blinking out of existence
or maybe she simply leaps
into the next dream
without waking.

Maybe she will come to accept
standing alone in the night
among the millions of shivering
stars contemplating solitude
or just cease dreaming.

She will recall the stories
sometimes, countless times,
a lifetime, a relentless need
in her to understand just
who she is by telling someone else
and perhaps one day
she may find that one soul
who sees her fears–

long dark hallways, closed spaces,
solitude among the millions.
Yet before that day, time and again
she will encounter those with no capacity
to understand how the vanquished feel.
because they themselves were never
defeated. Time and again,
the one she tells will hear in her words
only the sound of nothing
new, just insubstantial fancy,
a child’s nightmare that no doubt
should be properly
put away.