Oh, Honey

I dreamt you were eating my food. Detail: it was the lasagna

that I took for lunch today and I extrapolate that I must have been hungry but no

the dream was just that. You were eating it. So much for realism.

I tried to recapture sleep. I pointed at the dream, for instance

the flap of its wings or its voice. Muddy dead ends, a slurred moment aside—why

was the door open? Again. Why.  

I squeezed myself in. I was driving around, looking for evidence. I was trying

to give someone an award. Already the house

feels empty without you. I wait for you to enter. Someone else

was also alone.

I must have found nothing; not that it mattered. Hush.

The play is about to begin.

Amnesia

           (for M)

If some things are worth forgetting, some things

are certainly worth remembering as well. What haunts me:

           

            I used to know how to read a map.

            My hair.

            My inability to contain

            I used to know how to administer oxygen.

            My enthusiasm

            I used to know how to tell time.

            The gaps in the narrative

If I could I would forget for you. The pleasure of shifting—

I could have imagined us into existence—the pleasure

of admitting when darkness comes; it may never...

it may never be light again.

What haunts me?

If I could, before the darkness creeps in, I would touch everything: the pleasure

of forward motion. A crookedness that pricks, the miracle

already given away.

            I used to know how to look in the mirror.

            I used to know how to spell my name. I used to know how

to open a book without cracking the spine.

If some things are worth forgiving, some things

depend entirely—my reluctance, my enthusiasm, why I love this stupid song—on the gaps

in the narrative. The way your gaze disarms me and the exclamation of cloud. Sigh.

I rest in uncertainty, if only for the moment.