The Dead Mariner's Dream Poem by Derek Keck

She crept along the shoal of her home,
wondering if I dreamed of her.

She would ask me over the phone if
I had been staring at the same star that she had been.
I would say yes, alone, reading a book at home,
surrounded by walls, walls, and bad décor.

She crept along the shoal of her home throwing smoothed,
black rocks in to the sea foam. They would cut into
the heart of the wave, but the wave did always heal before
it killed itself in the bay and would be drug out again to be reborn.

She would leave lipstick on the letters she would write and
imprint them with perfume. It was a cheap vanilla smell,

but it smelled of long dead summers and the girls of my youth.

Now, to tell you the thing, the final secret that I never could write
and tell you.

I would lay the length of my bed in the morning, being heavy-eyed with dreams and
with your kiss on a letter and perfume. I would touch the pillow as if it were you.
As if it were your soft cheek and jawline, your curly brown hair and
eyes as blue as the ocean dreams of dead mariners. This was as close as I came to loving you, in
the morning, when you were not there. Just dreams of me and pillows, letters, kisses, and perfume.

I cried once, because of this,
and it makes me feel sad sometimes.

But this was all in eons past,
perhaps another millennia or world ago.

Hell, perhaps I made it all up and have lied to you.
Perhaps all there are,
are lies. Perhaps that is truth.