XIV. EVERY NIGHT I DREAM OF YOU Every night I dream of you. You enter me on the breath of the wind, you dance in the veils of substance. While I dream you unlock the worlds, and it all rushes together into one solitary image of you. You write your name in lipstick upon the dark mirror of the sky, and I see you there, radiant as a just-born constellation. How did I live before you existed? The wind wove a pattern of days, the naked rain fell upon the rooftops of our cities, and life slipped through me like water through a net. I heard the songs of brilliant birds and they meant nothing to me. Rivers were just rivers, stars were distant fireflies, all ships sailed past their horizons. And now you are here, rooted so deep inside of me. Do not leave me, do not shatter the dream, or tell me I am only dreaming. I am only dreaming of you, and that dream transforms the world. You smell like the flowers of spring, the hyacinths, the crocuses. You are fresh with life, fresh from the warm amnesiac bath of the beautiful. How did I love before you were created to be loved by me, how did I breathe before you became the air around me? Though you are thousands of miles away from me every day I drink you in. There is nothing in the universe more beautiful than your naked body. I want to array you with the gorgeous exotic flowers-- the orchids, frangipani, the tiare-- of the world's most lush and hidden valleys. I want you to step out of the dream and slowly undress for me, slowly part the bedewed colored petals to reveal your intense body of flesh and moonlight.