Maybe I Should Swim?

A net of white, pulpy mesh ushers me in through a long cylindrical tunnel.

The dreamscape then gets narrower and narrower as I progress

before I ultimately squeeze through a dark endpoint

to find our world opening up before me.

​

The ocean on my right, a forest on the left, this sandy pathway between.

I make a move to crawl forward out of my caterpillar perch in the sky, but first

the entirety of the Earth's crust trembles

like a table cloth or bedsheet in the hands of a tidy God.

​

The sand of the beach then swirls into a talking cyclone as I'm told something,

something important, only for me to be ushered away into the sea

without comprehending much at all. I then do things and see things that I don't remember

before I find you.

​

You are swimming deep in the ocean, mostly naked,

in the top half of an untethered, vintage, steampunk diving suit.

Your legs are perfect, edenic, and they lead me, lustlessly,

back to the sand now still.

​

We emerge from the water and you are no longer there, and I stand by myself perplexed.

No you. No tidy God. No small hole in the sky. Just my faulty memory of the words from the dustbowl.

Am I being told to walk this paradise

or not?

​

I know. Maybe I should swim

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