Verbchaser

I dreamt of a definition but I couldn’t place the word, It was a real-ass dream, the sleeping kind, not one of the other ones, and I was searching for a word, in the dream, like I always do, often stupidly, either because the word I’m thinking of is stupid, as in obscure, or because I myself feel stupid in the end for not having known it earlier, The word, the one I dreamt of, meant to vanish, to disappear discretely, that’s discretely, as in for a terminable time, a period that will end, must end, not discreetly, or in other words quietly, though depending on the depth of the dream it’s possible the two were confused, the double meaning was baked in, It must have been a verb, one or at most two syllables, I knew I’d come back, the word implied it, that I’d arrive again, after some time away, and the whole trip, everything I’d known for those many months, the man balancing a unicycle on a tightrope hanging between two traffic lights, holding up a million mopeds even as the light turned green, and the way the drivers just took it, waited for the man to detach the line, showing or feigning patience, knowing their options were publicly mowing down the man who’d strung a tightrope across the intersection or waiting for him to take it down, trusting him, but really it was more than trust, it was belief, the truth that he’d take the rig down, let traffic pass, in the swampy town with a dried-up riverbed modeled after downtown Sacramento, the place from which they pulled that strength, the profound peace, it would all be condensed into a single, sublime word, But in the dream I couldn’t figure it out, the word, and then I woke up and started my day, I never found it.

i bet you could

in your language

unspoken for centuries

dodging the latin bombing down from the cliff

draped over a decisive ledge

calculating whether to swim

how much can I put on you, how much can you hold?