I met you in a dream:
a child, trapped without your shoes,
toxic blood -invisible- covered the walls and floors,
I carried you out
of your poison home,
Whatever the route I chose,
the timing would be the same.
I wished I could’ve come sooner
so you wouldn’t have grown so frail,
so you wouldn’t have been afraid,
or cried one tear.
I hear
I missed a massacre-
Thank you for surviving.
I didn’t mind so much in the morning-
I didn’t think it was real.
Beautiful boy,
I didn’t know you were real.
I know that you’re surviving-
They even say you’re thriving.
I won’t ask
if you’re the one I love,
I know from how I feel,
but I can see
the poison realm you’re in.
The blood they think concealed
screams so loud to me.
You have to choose to leave-
It hurts to see,
and I won’t look again.
You have to come out by yourself.
I won’t doubt you, I love you,
I was trapped too,
I slept engulfed, breathing poison fumes,
it caught me early so my love would be of use-
Don’t ask me to come fall asleep with you,
in your dull ache,
Shake yourself awake.
Your entrapment is real.
Your captors are alert.
I cannot enter
even to pull you out-
You have to choose yourself free,
What a gift, what a remedy,
what medicine it was to me,
as I gasped for consciousness,
as I stumbled out
coughing sleepy mist,
to learn that you exist:
the person from my dreams,
no longer a blur-
Be assured,
as you take your steps,
that I’ll be outside,
waiting in the light.