Matthew Mayes

Let It Be a Dream

 Our Autumn sky is pregnant with violence: Dies Infaustus
               whistles the shades of red and orange
               as they dance across your skin. I look at you and I don’t
               know what to say; I’m standing right 
next to you — a stranger — as you face
               the t.v.       eyes       empty behind the shades of a dream;
               no one’s home, no one’s
               watching.
Do be dreaming a dream where you can run
               to the place where we made fifteen feet tall
               ramps with two feet’s worth of mud
               and juvenile hands.
Do be dreaming a dream where you can escape
               from these linoleum floors and faded gowns
               to the moments when you’d gleefully steer as I pressed the gas,
               because my legs were two years longer.
Do be dreaming a dream where you can return
               to the time when our woes stretched insofar as having to figure out:
               Do I go with or against the grain?
Do be dreaming a dream,
               because no one can hear you.

Matthew is a recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a BS in Biopsychology. He is currently in his gap years working as the office manager of an outpatient psychiatric clinic. In just over a year he will apply to medical school where he will pursue an MD/PhD, while conducting research into the neurobiology of addiction.