(D)elusive

sometimes I begin to believe I am not real
and the obligations of the world
are too many to swallow,

when they drop me, I will go (but
please don’t count upon the feathers
bleeding through my back, halos
hang like a noose, I

am a single dawn: do not
count on me to raise again
   it wears me out, gossamer
 thin and glistening as they wait
   for something to explode)

in a month, I will not remember
my name. I will have shed my skin
someplace south of the border and cold,
ice cold where the air is stale
and barely alive; in a month

I will be unable to look back.

but now, these floorboards creak
under the assumption of forgotten
memories; I left something of myself
in a night dark and long and lukewarm

like the people it stirred. wake up,
they wondered, it is dusk and
the trees are breathing and it seems
we’ve lost our way

(he said, let’s float once more
through the field of broken
things, before we die and before
I forget why I came.

it was almost sentimental the way
he fell soft when he realized I could
never come home again)

I am a figment bastard child
of the hopes for a better time;
imaginary and ebbing with the
scent of dying dreams, please,

wake up