Jim Lewis

birthday

 

that one song, the inevitable

sung lovingly off-key

the tag-line by whoever has had

the most to drink so far

and will find it most hilarious

 

a cake

which with any luck

or a little compassion

will not address the accumulated years

merely wish you happiness

on this annual celebration

 

if you still eat ice cream

will someone know to bring

your favorite flavor

or will it be vanilla

the safe bet

every time

 

so you add a notch

to the tally stick because

you accurately predicted

how the day would go

but the difference you feel

could be knowing

as you turn out the light

that there is more love around you

than you really know what to do with

 

 

dream, continued

 

and when i was in the dream

i recognized every detail

of a place i had never been

as clear as imagination can construct

 

you were there, as always

i never dream of someone else

without that sense of you present

sometimes observer, sometimes

seducer, sometimes executioner

 

not to say there aren't others

because there are. memories

of childhood crushes, long gone

adolescent loves i outgrew

and would never go back to

 

and the nagging questions are never

"where am i? is this real?"

but always "why here, why now"

and "why her?"

 

i wake without answers

and within minutes, forget

the entire dream, left only

with a vague sense that something

very important was not resolved

 

 

let me help you with that

 

so the discussion turned to darkness

and her inability to sleep when light

chases the dark, or flickers, or flares

or slides through the curtains in any manner

 

and i asked if she'd ever tried a blindfold

the functional, block-out-the-light kind

and of course she had and it didn't work

for one reason or another. who knows

 

she says she just uses a pillow as needed

pulls it across her head and face until

the light is blocked, but breathing is not

and i suddenly had a flash-back to television

 

and not a few movies where the cause of death

was suffocation by pillow. not overly messy

usually no fingerprints and so on, so i joked

"you'd be pretty easy to get rid of, and

 

who would know it was me?" or something like that

at which she laughed and suggested that if

i were planning anything, perhaps she

should have some input, because "it needs to be

 

done right, or it isn't worth doing and you

always need help with details." and because

she loves me so much, she calmly added

"and i wouldn't want you to go to jail"

 

friends, i ask you one and all, where could i

ever find another woman who loves me like that?