The Dream Pilot

All the unreal moments scatter across the beach.

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They fade and flame like trick birthday candles or moonlight’s shimmery detritus. White light bounces off everything tangible — shells and broken glass, sand and water, seaweed, the sound of waves, a dark puzzle of rocks.

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If I close my eyes, the radiance diamonding sea is still blinding. Ghost fire haunts my skin and hair, dapples the colors I’ve collected in my bucket of fantasies. Reality’s sticky, uncomfortable as a wet bathing suit, the kind of grit that won’t wash off.

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I don’t know if I’m a coward or not. I don’t know what you’d say if I asked because I never ask. I’m fluent in the language of fear, can shutter my mind against love in a single bound, wrap moth wings in wool for safekeeping.

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Don’t get me wrong. Tomorrow I’ll walk tightropes with strings of hearts tied round my ankles, write your name in circles across the blue, blue air.

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