The hiss-pop alarm clock flashed 8:15
And I pushed my locked arms against air
Until the bed collapsed,
Wrapping me in sheets, springs and a 
Dream I almost missed.

I saw music machines I had never seen,
Broken and silent next to a shadow burned 
Into a concrete porch
Where I never sat 
Waiting for you.

I felt a second sunrise;
Closed my eyes to remember
The first night your fingers slipped
Between mine.

I smelled the metal of a Ferris Wheel,
Burning and bent in the fairground sky,
Still turning as if laughing skeletons
Might drop from the midnight smoke
Just to rise again, happy out of their skin.

I looked for you behind the barkers in every tent;
Dodged water guns and plastic numbered ducks
Hurled by blistered fingers.

All I found was a mantis mother,
Front spike legs 
Raised toward New Mexico;
Just laid eggs aglow like
Charcoal soon to flame.

All I heard was the war-machine hum of cicadas, 
Blind and feeling for cool earth to land,
Finding only the warm glass of my window 
Whose truth cracked loose the air around my arms. 

But by then, your taste left in my mouth,
Cotton candy and summer honey hedge,
Had become metal snaking a creek
Dam-choked with a hard swallow.