that was a dream
i think i loved him
because he reminded me of you
he was canadian, too,
and he loved anime;
but he wasn't the girl that woke in me
the dreaming
when i thought it were dead—
yet even as we went up in flames
i loved him like he were you,
but he wasn't;
he wounded me without regret
and i pushed you aside with many—
perhaps that was the price
i had to pay
for hurting you,
and i'm sorry;
once i had a dream that we were reconciled
in a garden of white roses
at a white table
you wore a purple kimono and your hair
was dyed blonde,
i wore a red one and my hair was dyed red—
yet there was an unspoken agreement
that there was peace between us,
i woke up weeping;
because that was a dream and not a truth.
Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has six published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press, 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon, 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, 2018), more than bone music (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2019), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, 2018).