Fictions of the one you love
("Vertigo")

Not the life dreamt of
but the one found while living it—
terrors & fears,
the past plunging down like a bottomless nightmare—
it's all real.

The troubling dreams, the troubling fictions are real.
The fictions of the ones you love are real—
like a painting whose artifice outshines
the subject of the painting.

The white domed church overlooking the blue bay,
the cemetery obelisks next to the thin, blood-orange gladiolas,
& the mysterious woman fading into a forest dusk

are radiant with strange meanings.
Haze of desire over
every object of desire:

fear of paradise,
fear from panic.

The tragedy of never ever knowing