(my brother,)

When we were very little you used to tell me how much you loved those dreams where you're being chased by something scary, and then you just fly away. I never had those dreams, and yet I always knew exactly what you were talking about.

A new one, from right now

I like it, and hopefully so will you.

I don't understand it, and hopefully you won't either.

_____________

Eventually we were naked. For some reason I couldn't see you, or your body. Your skin was milky and cool and quiet, the way trees are cool and quiet, seemingly asleep or dead, but undeniably and explosively alive.

We took turns sprinting and laying down, with our bodies and with our eyes, we looked around:

no garden, but plenty of flowers. No flaming sword either, but plenty of thorns.

I couldn't see you, so I never really knew where you were, although I always found you somehow in some place, the location of which I never knew, not that I could see you anyway.

Sometimes I just gave up looking, which usually was when you found me, olly olly oxen free. We laughed a lot, though we never followed through with the whole catching a tiger by its toe plan, and paper hadn't been invented yet, much less scissors, so we just held our fists out at each other until we decided who was it.

And I always desperately wanted to hold you up on my shoulders, but I was always too afraid to say it.

And just between you and me, I miss those days.

You're damn right it rhymes

Sneaking suspicions snuck up surreptitiously.

Shrieking at visions stuck up in this listless me.

Breaking and quaking and almsgiving earthshaking,

Lonely apparitions plucked up from their homes in me.

Trust when it busts, the spinning Earth's crust, that is,

That spirits won't rust and grinning through the dust forgive.

Planning escapes, oh the messes we've made,

We'll do what we must, thinning through gusts of wind.

Notes left on tables, sort through the fables, dear,

Motes crossed on cables, in short all the stables clear

Out right in seconds, sprout flight I reckon

The boats all decradled, we're all Cains and Abels here.

I'm wincing volumes upon volumes,

And today you noticed the little things.