After a Dreamless Season

by April Lindner

Nightmares sweep in on thunderheads:
a faceless man reaches for me
on a street of charred trees and broken asphalt.
Floodwaters rise in silence.

Horizontal rain tests the windows
as I struggle back toward shore
but a riptide tows me out of reach.
Ghosts call my name and bid me run
through meadows of heather and landmines.

Beyond these dreams the night is lit
now and now, with bolts that shake the house.
Thunder barks its imperatives.
The tallest pine for miles
wavers and sways and I dream
its creamy flesh split at the heart,

Every twist in the convoluted plot
not random as it seems but charged with the logic
of nerves and circuits, each bolt slicing
its singular, forked course.