astral

soulsearch by danielle davis

Last Saturday my heart and mind went missing 
so 
I sent my soul hangliding 
over the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

Don’t get excited. 

The moment was a watercolor whirlwind. 
The missing pieces, innumerable. 

You may ask what happened to my bones but then I wouldn’t know; I
think they made better homes among the snow, 
between the white-creased winking dimples of a cyclops I saw sleeping. 

And next, I guess, my flesh, 
pierced by the bladed talon of a helicopter (or was it a dragon?)
and swept up in a sigh of wind 
and sent fluttering on the mast of a pirate ship 
headed for Neptune. 

I unpacked my eyes and pinned them to the highest peak,
(and I know because the view has not yet left me) 
that they might keep watch of Nature’s crueler devices
and so not hinder my soul in its flight. 

My soul, which scattered in seconds. 
Electricity dashed across the rocks, 
the aftershock of a shattered lightbulb. 
Latching at the edges of reality 
‘till reality turned to sun and pulp and wax. 

At some point there was a hole in the glider. 
Big enough to swallow the sunburnt sky. 
You may ask what happened? And how on earth did you survive?
But then, I wouldn’t know. 

Who am I to decide 
if the veil between life and death
is thinner than the one 
between dreams and reality?