Autobiography no. 16

Five years before they put her into the ground
we were sitting together and drinking on the steps of a campus dormitory
that neither of us lived in.
She asked what I wanted out of life and I began talking animatedly
about my literary pretensions, and how I wouldn’t always write
bad short stories like I had written those last months.
After a few minutes passed
the wind suddenly covered my face in her cigarette’s smoke.
She was smiling at me and shaking her head.
The oak leaves were skittering across the pavement
and the air was cool with autumn
and the moon was bright and nearly full
and with the moon’s voice she said
“If you dream it, it is a dream.”