Repose
by William Robert Flowers

Now that I've begun dreaming every night
I have the most mundane dreams.
Like crying over a vaccination shot or
eating bran with a married couple. At twelve, I was still
dreaming with relevance.
The closet in my bedroom was more
a passage to the attic lining the top floor of my parent's house.
I was infatuated with the echoes trapped there:
my mother's graduation gown, my grandpa Bill's
wheat scythe, a brass unicorn smothered in dust.
One night the attic opened into a dim hallway,
and I saw myself at a desk, lit yellow-orange by lamp light.
I was thin, and my full beard looked red.
We were surprised to see one another
of course.

Later that year I saw the most stereotypical Grim Reaper sitting
under an overpass, shrouded in a black cloak,
his skeleton arms resting negligently on his bent knees.
The van passed by quickly, and he sat
surrounded by graffiti and stooped over—
perhaps he was lost in his own dreams.

William Robert Flowers was born in rural western Tennessee. He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and is currently attending the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he is enrolled in the MFA program with a concentration on poetry. He has had work published in Poetry Miscellany, Hunger Mountain, and Great River Review. He lives in Wilmington with his wife, Megan.

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