Published in Burner Magazine

Nightmare #37

For Tereza and Tomas

I live for the bed. I live for the private, the closed doors;
your pajamas I beg to wash in my mouth
and never return. The rules of the bed are
no more secrets, no more clothes, and then no more rules
which means at any moment
the bed may become a water taxi
and take us to a place where there are strangers,
accessories, shirts laced with fear. Outside the bed
there are jokes. Jokes are human
and clothe fears. Jokes are a way to survive
in public. One morning I awake:
the pillows are waterlogged and I am a joke. You are wearing
a suit and a tie. You hand me a cane, no longer
a dandy. I am a cripple. A snail holds its bed
on its back. A hermit holds her lover’s pajamas
in her mouth. A water taxi charges the same fare
to the public: every body is the same. No parts
private. I cannot recognize your human parts
in a sea of shoes and pants and knock-knock,
who is there, fireman’s suspenders. Christine who?
I unswallow your pajamas and wave them around
like a blue and white flag. They are the same color
as your iris and white. Which you open
and close to try to get us to the place we were
before we both fell asleep and the cab opened its
blankets to hold every privacy we’ve ever shared.