GLYN EDWARDS

starlings

                 I knew it was a dream as the events felt like footage of murmurations / and because I was on a plane adjacent to you then at Arrivals beside you / and too quickly I was in your living room looking out the window at a tree / and the trunk had all of this is a gallery carved at eye level / and a fluorescent tube coiled inside the letters was switched off / and I put my hand to my chest to feel my pulse take flight /

         and I knew it was a dream because the house was more theatre set than home / and the balcony felt like a gantry over a stage filled with sculpted rooms / and structures were shaped as weaver bird nests / and in the interior of one space I was eating a pear / and after each bite I’d study the crescent I’d made in the flesh  / 

                                                        and in this dream you were holding a child on your hip / and you were animated by one another’s warmth / and I was studying how your voices chimed / and the way each of your bodies held light made me glow / and I picked up a book you’d left folded open on the counter / and I wanted to read it all but I knew I must choose sparingly / and I heard you on the phone asking what should I do? /

                                                      and I dreamt the only answer was to pretend we had no choice to make / and I tried to devour the ephemeral morning even though I knew it was futile / and your son showed me through the cottage garden to where the chickens lived / and I poached the fresh eggs I found in the piled feathers there / and as you were eating I was heart full and heart empty / and I touched your shoulder at the neck to say goodbye /

                                                                                             and in the dream I left your front door open as I stepped into the street / and someone walked past cushioning an invisible thing in their open palm / and when I asked they showed me a flattened shell pink / and the little treasure was creased like the unmade net of a shape / and they told me I could take it from them if I looked after it / 

                                                                                                                                                  and when I woke from the dream I searched for paper on the low table beside the bed / and in the half dark I could find only a notebook I’d thought was full / and there was one page with starlings written as a title in the top left corner / and I wondered whether to fill the blank space or leave it empty / and I disturbed the room the same way wind confuses the surface of water / and you rolled closer making the noises lake waves make on a stony bay / 

                                                                            and when your voice said are you awake? I wanted to say I love you but didn’t / and as the light came on my eyes imagined stars all over your silhouette / and then it revealed the little pleats the pillows had left on your face / and you got up to shower so I moved to your side of the bed / and it was as warm as a nest and it smelled like your skin / and the lamp there helped me to form sense from the words I had written / and I knew that dreams make promises that dreams can’t keep