Dreams Poem by Celine Socrates

They must have some explanation,
these fragments of human thought
bearing the mark of the world
you hide within you,
for how can we choose which life
we awaken to?
You map out patterns
from the cacophony of fragmentary images,
familiar faces you cannot remember,
songs you must have heard
in childhood. Tonight, it's the voice of someone
singing through the foggy haze of an abandoned alley
beckoning you to the darkness.
You must have known this stranger
all your life.
Always, there is something
classic about it; something new
and something haunting.
Now you spend the day sketching
the contours of this voice
from the fringes of your memory,
deciphering the language of its body
and the music of its song.
You spend your afternoon walking
through the dark, forgotten alleys
across the city's urban decadence.
Tonight, you dread to hear it again,
though part of you longs for the sinister cold
of that alley, the fog hiding something,
revealing something.