Flight Dreams


I often dreamt of flying when I was younger.
Such dreams supposedly meant

that I had feelings of entrapment in my real life.
It was true. Back then I believed

I was determined to lead a life
my parents would be proud of: I would attain

a degree, a job, remain a Christian, marry a nice girl.
During those days, I would fly

off balconies, jump off the tops of flats and swim
through air for hours in my sleep.

Then I discovered a part of me that rose up
in a hundred bedrooms that eventually

looked like each other, when a stranger’s
hand or mouth would push me back into myself,

only to suck me back out again by the shock
of the body’s capacity for desire

like a black wave rolling back and forth,
back and forth right through me.

I remember I was catapulted from that claustrophobic
room of my parents’ dream of my future.

I believed I began to understand myself
for the first time. The idea of a self

was an astronaut who had been cut
free from his spacecraft and made to float

straight out into a starry nothingness.
For a long time after that, I could not recall

the last time I actually dreamt of flying.

from Unmarked Treasure

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