You slip in and out of dreams. A marble gliding across a grate;

I can almost hear the pleasing clack of it remembered so well from childhood.

The slide of the swirling glass as it slid across the iron and landed where?

My side? And for keeps? For the moment would be fine…

Just so long as I could put you in my pocket for a while.

Just so long as I could run my long pale-willow fingers over each, palming their coolness

until each warms beneath my touch.

I would peek inside my pocket and catch them gleaming back – yellow, green.

Such treasures, pleasures, however fleeting.

And no matter that I have to wager them again next recess,

I would win them back just because, just because, just because

I would be your champion, your savior. Just to hold on a little longer.

All of this you would never know.

You would never know because elsewhere your own marbled-eyes would be busy

taking in great skies, watching those great cumulo-nimbus as they floated clear across your horizon

as you took it all in beneath a mackerel sky as the storm rolled forever out.