Driving While You Sleep

Previously published in The Lingua Journal

Rain swells over the windshield wipers, each tidal wave part

of a bead curtain that streaks the glass and blurs the night,

and I trace every rivulet to its end, floating up with each away

from the murky headlights and our loosely linked hands that rest,

limp, on your thigh. I drift free from my knot of veins, woven

like kelp, to the surface where I touch the empty sky for the first time

since we met (when your grey eyes submerged me like a prophecy,

an end-time flood that sweeps mountains and mingles orcas

with the evergreens we’re passing by).  Now the rain’s dark patter

echoes through space, overwhelming your sighs, those siren exhalations

that would anchor me beside you. So my care floats, unmoored,

on the surface of Love as I draw my hand from yours to adjust

the windshield wipers, so I can see the road.