free at last, free at last

your last refuge in my life is in my dreams.
only there are you a physical presence,
who cradles me, and then disappears.
We start in a tent, in a park,
or we start on a train,
and all is bliss, all is love.
Then you leave or disappear while
I am occupied with something else.
I look for you until I wake, look
for clues to understand.
The story has told itself in anagrams
and symbols,
myth and picture.
So I lived my life for two months,
studying the same facts
with a ferocious obsessiveness
that bordered on madness.
Or was madness.
No pressure of my mind would
loosen my tight grasp.
I suffered.
Oh how I suffered.
But now, my waking life is mine
again,
and I am not sure how I
managed to fit so much of you
into my day, into my very breath.

You are gone at last, I am free at last.