No Dream

My lips brushed it—or did I dream that nape exhaling such perfume, those fine hairs wicking it erect in my breath’s breeze to conduct odors too thick, too sweet to swallow, embalmed in roses and vanilla? Did I know that softest skin, a patch unsullied by the sun, so smooth the fingers of the blind would hush when knowledge reached its end? How many groped that brailleless land where breathless touch translates to sound? How many watched you turning, deaf, as if you’d known no human life, as if you heard no drowning scream as you sailed out the crowded room?