The dead man was dreaming again. Words floated up from the underworld like old friends, like articulated clots of dried blood rising slowly in viscous fluid. One became the Sun; another was an ocelot. Up near the surface, ripples rang out where a platypus swam. Their movements circumscribed a story and the story was your eyes, the invisibilities of breathing, your feverish presence to love and desire. Like the white hand of twelve perfect children, the dead man was me. His words were my life. My breath was his silent sepulcher. Black butterflies hovered in rings above the water where he sank, I rose, and your eyes passionately intervened. When the moon ascended in the night sky, his bones sang. When a star fell, he flew. The water pulsed like a transparent heart, where you and I found all we had lost together, and lost all that was superfluous. The dead man dreamed, deep in the heart of the water’s embrace.