Our bedroom was black.
Faceless black, the kind that tells nothing.
Quiet rain started. Curtains rippled.
White flashes showed furniture:
a dresser, a wall mirror.
A hall door shut itself, upstairs.
We slept.
I tossed onto my side, nearly waking,
flickered my eyelids…
…through whistling trees
a moist wind poured off the mountains.
I stood on a cliff overlooking the green valleys
of the country I had fled
when, all at once, terror gripped me
–you were not with me.
In your neighboring dreaming
you heard the acid crackle
of quick, sharp drops on the panes
as fire. We,
the whole house, blazing!
You bolted upright, clung to me,
waking me
to listen to your fear.
No fire. Rain, I soothed you.
You slept. I waited for each breath
until sure of you, then slept too.
Thunder washed by.
We dreamed calms,
having met, briefly, under shelter we shared:
the cold, sure act of rain.