Our Shared Nightmare

I am asleep, lost in a dream

that feels like a lifetime in the matter of hours.

I find a ship and as I sailed out to other horizons your voice called to me, distorted melodies exalted to be as hymns.

Mesmerized by one another when our eyes finally met we vowed till death do us part we’d rot hand in hand.

The vibrations that left your lips you proclaimed as the “truth”
had me swaying back and forth to its rhythm, enchanted until I was no longer.

The sky now darker than the bottom of the sea.

I ask what is this truth?

In your hands you show a precious infant born in a burial gown,

its features rippling like the surface of the sea you wade in, hissing at me if I gazed too long. I ask you to come onboard ship and you agree.

I show my truth, a blade that has been by my side, sturdy and unchanging.

Offering it to you as a gift out of love, to sever yourself free of this nightmare loop.

You lunge at me before I could even react with the fury and passion protecting your child.

The waters of life running slick from the stab wound in your neck, I apply pressure to close it but my eyes begin to open.

I’m awake in my room alone with blood on my hands and a gurgling melody repeating “you were supposed to save me”. Mourning the loss of the life with a wife I never met or had.