Forbidden City

Asleep until noon, I'm dreaming we've been granted another year. You're here with me, healthy. Then, half-awake, the half-truth— this is our last day. Life's leaking away again, and this time, we know it. Dear body, I told you, pleading, Don't Leave! but I understand you can't say anything. Who are we? Are we fictional? We don't look like our pictures, don't look like anyone I know. Daylight flickers through a bamboo grove, we approach the Forbidden City, Looking together for the Hall of Fulfilling Original Wishes. Time is the treasure, you tell me, and the past is its hiding place. I instruct our fictional children, The past is the treasure, time is its hiding place. If we told him how much we love him, how much we miss him, he could stay.