Tiger Lilies, White Lilies, Chrysanthemums.

last night I had a dream and in this dream I was in a tiny boat,

sitting in the sand of a desert that never seemed to end.

I was thirsty, so thirsty, the air was salty on my tongue,

so I stood up and stepped out to search for water,

but as I stepped the dunes turned to ocean swells and I fell into black, black water.

Impossibly dark.

I remember clawing at the side of the stained painted wood,

but the more I pulled myself from the water the thicker it became,

turning to sandy sludge, then mud, then clay.

Holding me there until my arms were too weak to hold myself,

and as I let go the clay washed away again to dark water,

and I was sinking.

I remember breathing out my last breath and watching come, from my mouth,

dead white birds falling upwards, limp and sad.

As I sank I tumbled, losing sense of up and down.

Eyes wide, seeing nothing, swallowing this dark water which had swallowed me.

Then I felt rocks around me, under me, beside me.

Desperate, I kicked and flailed and grabbed and pulled along them,

feeling the beginnings of a tide begin to push me.

I remember, fingers crawling, coming to a door, still underwater, and trying the handle.

I shook it, I twisted it, wrenched with all the small amount of strength I had left,

but the door stood fast.

I beat against the boards themselves, fists as dark as the water between the everythings,

fists I couldn't see, against the door which only existed in the ache I felt in my hands.

Then for no perceivable reason it swung open, hinges bursting from their jamb,

and the wall of water behind me laid my chest against the floor as it crashed into the room.

I laid there, a doormat washed ashore, drier than I should have been,

coughing winged and feathered eels onto the floor before they set sail on wet wings,

flying into the coals of the fireplace, their smoke drifting up the chimney.

Black, black smoke.

Cold and feeling death I limped my body to the coals,

warming ghostly skin which dripped a ghastly wet.

Cozy, cozy, eyelids dropping I began to sway, not to the left, not to the right, 

but to there and another sweeter place more than far away.

Half asleep I fell again, into the embers of the only peace that I had found,

skin aflame, too weak to move, I burned.

My flesh popped and oily fire kissed me, it's lingering lips tasting like salt and ash.

There was a moment, like realizing I would never taste water again, where I became more flecks of ash than flesh,

and as I floated up, through the bricks and mortar I heard something,

I heard that there were never sounds, that there never would be sounds,

and I saw that there were never sights, and never would be sights,

I tasted the echoes of tastes that never were,

and for a third time, I fell.

I remember falling, a final time, from the top of this tall chimney, bricks on bricks on crushed small things.

Some of me drifted this way, and other parts of me drifted other ways away from me, 

a fine dust cloud I had become, stretching everywhere and falling down. 

As I settled I was not alone, ashes on ashes everywhere I touched,

hills, mountains, rolling fields, everywhere things were, all ash, all dunes.

I had become the desert.

And at my most center was an empty boat.