Melatonin Dreams

I never told you the dream I had

two weeks before you left. I was

standing on a sun-parched field

before a large rock. A circular waist-

high mass of grayish brownish lumps.

I pushed, stirring up dust clouds in a Colorado heat.

The field sloped upwards but was shaped

like an aqueduct: sides falling away at ever-steeper angles

until I balanced on a thin ledge.

I looked up at the cloudless blue

sky and when I looked

back at the boulder, it was

a jumbled mess of arms and legs

pulling and kicking and helping me roll up

this hill shoulders and knees and ankles and

wrists were the lumps of the rock and with

a push I saw its face for the first time eyes

explosive mouth slightly open like it couldn’t

think of what to say and it was you, at least

your hair your nose your cheekbones

but contorted always staring straight

back at

I froze. You teetered and rolled

back over me. I fell onto my back,

my head resting against your naked thigh

sticking in the heat of a Virginia summer.

Your back was against

our tree on the lawn. I turned my head and

kissed your lips and woke with half my

body hanging off the edge of the twin bed

we shared for that month, my right arm

pinned under you and the comforter you slept with

even in the summer. Yet there I was, sweating under my own

holey blanket, swimming in the AC’s chill.

Sam Nicol is a bisexual poet, writer, and baker currently living in Oakland, California though that is precariously subject to change. He holds a Masters from the University of Virginia where he founded a literary society and hosted a radio show.