Pinch Me, I Must Be

How do I know this is a dream
and not somewhere I've been before;
a memory, half-remembered with

unplaced faces, familiar but nameless,
o permeable populous of every dreamscape
where even lovers have never been so strange,

where stagnant fears of youth
swirl up the drain
and experience is a stomped foot
onto who you can't believe you've been,
or what was left in darker rooms.

A stray black t-shirt flattened to the street,
I think "Could this have been me,
a slave to a clock,
tryna cheat a memory?"

Each synapse a lead
to more rooms with no keys.
Lo, I am every turn,
every creak of footstep,
the sound of one shoe
a-scrape, a-scrape,
drag my eyes open,
wake me, wake me,
wake me with a pinch

and I'm home.