Sounds Instead of Dreaming I remember the whispering, like breeze, of sap freezing inside the huge tree in our back yard. And I remember the prickly feeling of someone's breath on my neck when I went alone into the wire woods out back, when I went out and down into the frozen swamps where all those other children lived--children with snow for eyes and breath of burning plastic. And so I loved old stories. I loved the smell of dirt and gasoline. I loved breeze across the cattails, across marsh grass when the tide was high. Then one cold New Year's Eve a little girl showed me a long chunk of styrofoam hidden in the marshes; and even though the winter was metallic and hurt, we took off our shoes and stepped on that tippy raft, pushed off into the harbor, out across the freezing. And soon we were falling, with the falling tide, out to what we never dared call sea, never called ocean, never called anything but maybe and beyond, where the appetite we'd never met could find its satisfaction, where the dark doors we dreamed of were always wide open. Afraid of tipping over, we couldn't move at all; we froze in one position and waited for the tide to turn. Since we didn't dare talk, we told each other silent stories. And since we told each other silence, we fell in love. When we got home, finally, it was almost next year. But no one seemed worried. No one seemed to have missed us. So my true love with the yellow tongue and burning flavor kissed me. Then she held my hand. Her hand was warm, though she hadn't worn gloves all those hours on the water. At the touch of her sure, warm hands, I fell ever more deeply, more inarticulately, in love. My own hands were numb with cold, curled on themselves and sharp as claws.