You sugar your palms for them.
If dawn is coming they will shiver
down the mountain.
Each fading star a sweetness,
the last long brush of dark –
The mountain is familiar.
The lake is familiar. The feeling
of a live thing between your legs
familiar, the skin on your skin
Likeness, a jumping collarbone,
a lack of precision, a suture
pulled undone. There is no dust
to these dreams
That’s how you know
they aren’t real.
Alessandra Occhiolini is a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow at the New York Public Library. Her poetry, essays, and fiction appear in The Madison Review, CUSP, LARB’s Avidly, and Back Patio Press.
