Because I Don't Think I Made it Clear at the Time When I woke up screaming from a train-shattered dream and you pulled me up from the floor as if from drowning and asked What and Why and I tried to explain through the sobs and the shaking and the holding close and you drifted off so quickly back into sleep, there in the moonlight streaming under the too-short curtains above our makeshift bed, your face becalmed, untroubled, like I so often wished mine were for you— It wasn’t me, in the dream, trapped on the tracks with the train, and that’s not to say I’ve not been afraid for myself before, not dreamt my own death a hundred times or more, but the thing about your heart pounding is it lets you know you’re fine and what I don’t think I made clear at the time is that I awoke not knowing if you made it out alive. And so the screams, the holding close. I’ve been trying to get through all the things I never said to you and I think this might be the most important. I know your life is not mine to worry about, but your heart once was, so here is my wish for you: may you only dream your own death, the easiest thing from which to save yourself.
Certain of Eventual Failure 