I do not call it sleep; not when she walks the corridors

of every hush I fall into,

There, she does not knock.

She enters like a sigh I forgot I was holding; wearing the silence of stars

and the warmth of a name never spoken aloud.

Oh her laughter! It curls like incense in the folds of my vision,

Not loud, just enough to make the shadows lean in,

We dance without touching,

close enough for longing to bloom,

Far enough for my pulse to ache with restraint.

Sometimes, she weeps,

Sometimes, she shines,

Always, I am reaching; never arriving,

And when dawn untangles her fingers from mine,

I carry her like a secret

that doesn’t belong to me.

So how do I say it?

That the version of her in the waking world is a stranger to the one

who writes sonnets in my sleep,

That I have loved a version of her crafted by the mercy of moonlight,

That I wonder if she dreams me, too,

Or if I am just a phantom passing

through her undisturbed nights.

Should I tell her?

Or would the telling make it less real?

Would it cage the magic,

clip the wings of what only dreams could teach me to feel?

Maybe I just look at her a little longer than I should,

Maybe that is the poem

Maybe that is the telling.