LIFE Poem: dreamer, by Emily Anna King

梦想家
dreamer

一

Perhaps her dress wouldn’t have been so frayed if she stayed home;

their car sputtered down I-82 as albuterol in her throat tasted like apples

she breathed in

and the air smelled like chewed peanuts and
summer air run over by gas and oil

she thought of the dog’s bowl drying out, weeds in the sidewalk,
a $500 medical bill, an old treehouse filled with nails

her smile fell like a wilted moonbeam;
he reached for her hand

二

Perhaps she misplaced her childhood—
by his cigarette lighter, at the crossroads of lower quay and the south bridge,
by the open sea, in the sand where she tried to patch herself back together

grainy sound of voices on the other end of the line, poured glasses of wine,
footsteps bare in the forest beside deer prints and oak

三

To the water, voices
another story of peter and wendy:

she couldn’t stay
he couldn’t leave
too young to be love
too old to be anything else

and that’s where they meet:

on the verge of living

where we realize what we’ll lose
in order to chase the sun—

to be a lost boy, a lost child: an expectation, a gift in certain hands
to be a lost adult: a liability, a lamb

四

In a field by the highway, they tear up wildflowers with running feet;
her dress catches thorns and petals, becomes stained with pinks and yellows

their car flashes from afar, some form of help on the way

later, she’ll write abut the sunset piercing an ocean ahead,
through a fog of smoke from his lips,

how her smile will return with the tides.