she picks lotuses while he murmurs
"nothing is real in this slumber" and turns,
his psyche's fingers exquisite in their capacity
to worry
his own coma, unearthing garnets through
the pale mines of his cellular dirt.
and she is white
in her cocktail dress, a fish-fly beneath the
dome of summer's martini glass, cranberry
bile smeared across the sun. a ghost child,
she haunts him,
purple blossoms whispering up from
each place her white feet have kissed
as she smiles through teeth strangled
with petals, then lowers her head
to chew another flower's waxy crown.
"come, dreamer," she says, and he is lost
(at least for this instant).

he follows, jewels dripping from his eyes,
ears and nose, flooding the ground in uncut
mounds. she dies and he resurrects
her, and they are both too innocent
to vanish completely.

she grins while she leads him across water where
their foosteps leave only ripples between
the budding fauna. her white legs move like
mermaid fins, and he falls to his knees as
she begins to dissolve, words painting the air
before them in splashes of obsession.
"tell me what truth is," he says, and
his lips are red against her toes.

her whisper is every sound he has ever known,
but he never remembers the words once she's dead.