In My Dreams

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In My Dreams 

In my dreams 
of you being alive, 
sort of,
the air is so crowded
with those
with a need to be loved
that I missed 
the turn-off to Heaven.

At the next exit 
I hold my breath, 
wait for 
my restless heart 
to settle.

Here, 
there are no traffic rules
or boundaries
and—
there are no demons 
waiting to prosecute
my nightmares 

And,
in my head,
I get to talk to you
all the time- 
not your ashes. 

I can 
let you 
shape yourself
into who you 
think I am—
even
when the wind
does not keep. 

And
I do not
have to live through
the jealous love
that
emptied 
us.

Here, 
there is enough air 
to hold us up—
or turn around

to 
come 
through  
each other
toward
what 
might
be
home.

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In My Dreams began with a letter—brief, bureaucratic, final. It marked the end of a five-year term of benefit payments from my ex-wife’s pension. That document, so stark in its language, carried more than financial closure. It was the formal end of any secular connection between us.

I felt a wave of gratitude for her generosity, for the thoughtful love-sacrifice embedded in that gesture. But I also felt the quiet devastation of finality. She now exists only in memory, in ritual, in breath.

This poem is my thank-you to her. Not sentimental, but architectural. Not elegiac in the traditional sense, but speculative—a space where I can still speak to her, not her ashes. Where the wind may fail, but the breath remains. It’s a poem that resists prosecution, resists closure, and instead builds a ritual of turning, of breath, of return.

It’s not about grief alone. It’s about the architecture of gratitude, the consequence of love, and the quiet rituals we build to honor what remains.