At night, I dream of a Victorian home
that I have never seen in my waking hours.
As real and as comforting 

as any house I have ever known,
I long to revisit this three-storied mansion
when I close my eyes on wind-wrapped nights. 

Black and white portraits of strangers on the walls,
a potbelly stove peeling at the bellybutton,
and lace-fingered doilies on an oak table pull me 

to a darkened corner room, in particular,
with a spider that greets me as a fly,
stuck in a web of recurring, gossamer memories.

Salty waves lap against a stone foundation,
and ebony stones arranged in a familiar pattern
whisper in a language I used to know by heart. 

How can I wish to return 
to what I do not know in this life?
Will I dream one far-future day 

of the rooms I inhabit when I write
words such as these,
with unseen cobwebs 

that catch an occasional fly 
that buzzes untranslated gibberish 
and offers me respite from a world 

I do not understand when I am awake?
With bitter green tea leaves and 
a winter solstice wind in the waning sun,

I swallow the day’s invisibilities, and pray
to visit the young girl in the oval frame 
with eyes that have seen me before,

and a whisper through time:
How good it feels to be seen.