Diego Baez

Midnight on Lake Michigan

1998

Whether it was just a dream
or a thought in my sleep,
I saw you in your bathing suit
drawing lines in the sand
and lying in the Atlantic.

But it wasn’t my imagination
when I saw you ask that night
with your eyes whether
the Great Lakes were ever glaciers
in disguise, eons underwater.

So here I am, awake on the pier
without an idea as to where you’ve been
or why the stars will soon remove
themselves, but really, your disappearance
has never been a question of whether.

Diego Baez, na Granta.