Dreaming Backward toward Twilight

Twilight where you live is different from twilight where I live.

The gloom of the onset of night hangs over the trees and the marshes here like a net, something tangible, like a felt blanket of almost-night or a shawl.

Where you are, where I imagine you to be, the sun sinks behind a ridge of towering mountains in blazes of pink and orange and heartbreaking lavender.

It disappears from view defeated by itself, tired of the day, perhaps, but still so willing to give so much of itself, like my mother must've done, weary from hours of crying or bickering or the need need need for attention with which children approach adults.

And there my mother is, dreaming of quiet, of, perhaps, some moments alone, or the feel of my father's hand on the nape of her neck, patiently reading to me before I fall asleep.

I might have invented the memory of my mother, willed it up, an object of fantasy, unicorn-like.

And I might be imagining the sunset in your hometown; I only ever drove through it once or twice, after all, but you, you are not imaginary.

No. I imagine you as well.

You are my invention, fabricated by longing, by age, by the eye of my desire for someone just like you.

I dreamed – I am sure of it – long before you ever appeared, of exactly this smile, this devious but innocent twinkle in the green of your eyes, the rough touch of your left hand as it slips into my right, awkwardly at first, and then snugly fitting.

--from 30 July 2011.