The Dreamers
A Poem for the Revisionists Among Us
we sit in our bedrooms, lights off, eyes closed, hands behind our heads. rewriting the world the way we think it should be. in this version, nothing important slips passed us, the doubt never takes root, we move forward unafraid. but life waits beyond the window glass, out where the night air carries the smell of gas and gardenias. where bars hum like vengeful neon gods feeding on the love and loneliness the city drags through the door. out there, people spend themselves freely, never asking for permission from their own heads. they casually enter a room and let their whole life change. meanwhile, we sprawl in the dark, running our thumbs along old possibilities, lifting whole sections of the past, turning them toward a better light. certain somewhere beneath the damage and all the ordinary failures of being human, there remains another version. one that never developed the mournful habit of looking back.
P.S. Thank you to Duane Toops for sending me pictures of the grungiest bathrooms New Orleans had to offer.
There’s a softness in this piece that resonates. Regret and nostalgia held gently, looked at tenderly. And so many great lines that I’m going to steal for titles unapologetically 😉