There's a place that I go sometimes when I'm asleep, 

A secret nook hidden behind a panel in my mind. 

It lives between restless dreams and waking up, 

There and not there, awake and asleep. 

 

It's an arid seabed, shapeless, dry, and carved into stone, 

A trench that inside, like an elephant graveyard, 

Are the bleached bones of my past, ivory and granite, 

And oil-slick, shifting onyx of what I don't yet know.

 

I always stand on the beach of sand and glass, trying to find the opposite shore, 

Feeling small, faced with a daemon of the infinite. 

Stepping in, I walk between the pressed pages 

Of a life filled with the joy of birthdays and the sting of first love.

 

Although I can never see it, I know that my memories 

Are collected and stitched together by the love of my mother, 

Gently tended, each photograph labeled alphabetically,

Secured with a hug and a song to fall asleep. 

 

The sky is bleak and lifeless, heavy with the smell of rain,

I can feel thunder grind the earth under the skin of my feet. 

Whatever it is, I don't know, and I'm always too afraid to chase the storm. 

Maybe it's an awful future just over the next horizon, 

Or a memento mori, like the last note of a song after it ends.

 

When the place in between finally fades and I'm awake

I always forget the smell and the shape of it. 

But in my mouth the taste of burnt copper lingers, 

And the thrum of rain on my windowsill.