Good Byes (November 2013) by Renee

The love of my life still remembers, with pause, this childhood thought:

That all he lived and learned and loved were just the vivid dream

of a single palm tree – the sole occupant on a distant planet.

We all have this fear, don’t we? That in the involuntary flutter

of a waking eye the contents of a life can turn to crust

on sleepy lashes. Gone, to the fleeting memory of a finite slumber.

I can imagine the scene so clearly. My love returns to consciousness 
on that lonely planet, drifting in eternal space. Slowly, he returns 
to his bark skin, heavy and numb from sleep.

His coconut eyes fuzzy and unfocused, still trying to look

through some avatar’s strange squishy eyes. What is real?

He stretches his root toes and feels rock. He scans

the familiar landscape of his barren planet, and ruffles

his leaves, attune to that sound. And yet, there was that dream.

And this feeling. Can you miss what you never really had? Or,

can you mourn what you never really lost? Why, 
in the midst of everything warm and human, do we feel, 
in our pumping hearts and with real tears, 
the loneliness of an imaginary palm tree

in an unfathomable eternity?