In dreams I swim freely
in turquoise water and we are on perpetual holiday,
the elaborate leaves of cigar skins wrapping around your fingers.
Your voice is different in Bermuda or Barcelona or Italy, a baritone I recognize
as burnished by tropical places we have not visited yet.

You’re a California gentleman who has trouble with the heat, and I am a Wanderer
who can never get enough Sun or Rain in an ever-shifting landscape.
Yet, your heart is lighter in vague foreign places, where you do not resist sleep.
In the dark, you reach for me as a constant force…I have always been galvanized, with an insomniac’s brain.
Early mornings, you vanish into fatigue, and wake wordlessly.

During these in-betweens, the sky is formless and melts into the ocean.
We wade up to our shoulders, a place where afternoon never dares to turn to Twilight.

I tell you not to worry and propel you off to work because my spine is made of steel. In “real life” (wherever that is),
we carry so many nuance within ourselves. Some catch glimpses of that which others are blind to.
I focus on being “blank” while music streams through my brain. A necessary logic.

GALVANIZED. Meanwhile, my Pancreas attempts yet another great battle—which I intend to win…