Aldo Amparán
Sleep, Brother,
has strange ways of arriving unannounced
since you died. Has been dreamless white
—a series of blanks on a page otherwise
filled with text. Unnecessary
white space you left.
Brother, I see you
when I wake up. Ghost
of dreams I didn’t have. Or had
forgotten by the time the single fleck of sun
punctured the vein of black sky & blacker
mountain top. Violet stain on the ceiling
of the city. On the balcony, I remember
my night’s waiting for Sleep
to carry you out of the bedroom,
my first lover outside, ready to slip in
-to me. Firm
smell of his breath
on my nostrils. Screech
of the bed & your breath
steaming from the other side
of the room. What dreams
we interrupted with my lover’s ending,
that liquid hum. What dreams
when I turned to see you seeing
our limbs under the blankets. What questions
you never asked. Your silence the blank
space I yearned for that night, now
the white slit of air inside my ribs—