oddly
my dreams have aged to elderly
where potential and possibility have withered autumn brittle into the surfaces I’ve collected
the faces reaching into me are all familiar, even the strangers
that fill each scenario, handing me objects of forgotten purpose
pulled from an archive of life time
We populate an impressionist pastiche of when and where until no 

my body’s changed, I don’t work here anymore, we’re not friends, I graduated years ago, you’re long dead, you hate me now

I am today, slumbering along in yesterday fiction or
slip down in grateful bliss and take my place
in the gently puzzling allegory, leading the circle of compromised past

.