AS IF

A silent recitation in every step.
My feet are claws. I cling to the earth as if
it were a ceiling. My teeth and my bed are as worn
as the side of a cliff. By boot
and pick and clip, I cling here and dream here
of trees; one tree. I walk around it slowly; brush
my palm over its trunk. A caress. An oak.
We enfold one another.

I am wearing blue and walking the ground as if it were
a dying sky. I am a weakened wing and every moment
is my last thrust against uplift. At least, it may be.
I keep on to keep from (don't we all)
falling. I'm a cat burglar sprawled across green calm.
A place that cools my belly and throbs in bone. Sometimes
I forget I have them. A loose scaffold tangled through
with dull nerve. Thief or scavenger, I seek renewal;
the sensation of an oversized, hopeful memory
in reconciliation to now.

And then, a sound; predatory. I dream a leapord.
We are one and separate. A face off. Faceless,
both of us equal in our hunger but we're not
after flesh. Not really. He burns
away my spots with jealous, albino eyes.
He leaves me white
as a perfect picket fence.
I gleam across
his remorselessness.

Drowning is a terrible way to die.
The lines that defined my skin
as separate from his
or from water
or from air, were erased.
I thought it safe
to breathe just below the surface.
It is,
it's as if I emerged,
if I emerge,
from this dream,
with a cough in a gasp to find my skin
still damp and all my spots bled off.