Who Will Not Be Home

I can’t wake from the nightmare you are dead.
I dream of you
smelling the forest on your skin,
have conversations we never had,
like last night’s conversation on the history of our valley;
who owned the land before,
what they farmed,
your Washingtonian twang posing questions
as you do when your country mind ponders and dreams,
holding my hand as you drove
your thumb brushing against my palm.
It was Halloween, the smell of fallen leaves and wood smoke
combined in the car with your immediate scent,
strong like it has been every year.
We talked about who will stay and who will not be home,
who will open the door.
You pulled into our driveway in the afternoon light
and then asked our son to park the car.
Now it morning and I wake still to winter’s chill,
an empty bed,
fall still eight months away;
your absence from my dream a sharp pressure,
my lungs emptied of you.
I throw my arm over my eyes
trying to will myself back into the dream
but I already know the futility of it;
there is no more conversations with you
You now exist only in pictures, in poems
and dreams.
And I must live within this nightmare.