Is this a dream? The August sun,
the trees in the moment before their decline,

the high bodiless clouds skimming the horizon,
the water a second skin my strokes

slough off, and Celia swimming
her small strokes inside me as I swim?

Celia, the first and only one,
who fits like a seed in my sleeping palm,

who comes unspeaking to me in dreams,
her eyes half blue, half brown.

I cannot remember my own time, floating
in the warm birth sac, my mother asleep,

the waters still, the two of us
dreaming. What, what did we dream of?

Speak to me, Celia. Speak. Speak.
Before birth erases memory and suddenly

you are taken from me, then given back,
wrapped in the white gown of forgetting,

changed, utterly changed. As I will be.
This is our summer, the summer of the dream

we will, too soon, awaken from,
shocked and surprised, in our separate bodies.

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