Now that you are gone in this way

When you were gone in such a way that only dreams could do what memories ought to, summer wind filled my sleep. I dreamed wide blue thrown-open skies, toes pushing off of cool tree bark, and dripping faces under those gracious madly loving heavens. And your laughter. You would wake up laughing and I liked it better than any I’d ever heard, because it seemed to come from a miraculously unconscious, essential joy. Your laughter blossomed across my skin in patterns of vines and flowers that I still wear, though their stain has deepened in color to a more solemn joy.

Sometimes I see you striding, jaunty, up-weighted, towards yesterday and the edges of where I can be. You tipped your face up to the sky like it was all you would ever need, and your hair falling back from your star-laughing brow is what I watch wade deeper into elsewhere. When I wake, my tapestry hands hold the thought of your swinging arms.