that lightning in the chest

She takes the dreams out of his skull--a small boat, its departure from the harbor, the gradual loss of land.  She can smell the hull wood baked into brittleness by the sun, the drop over an edge into nothing but water & horizon, the slackening of time that accompanies the absence of spatial direction.
She sits there for awhile, culling through his brain.
- Dawn Clifton Tripp, Moontide

(image: Patterson Maker)