This is a true story. One wet
March night when I was nearly set to wed
the Wrong One, a friend's semblance shaking
with anger barged into my dream. Making
yourself miserable, it spat, and for what? What for?
My friend's image stamped its foot and swore--
I woke, and called my would-be fiancé
to break it off. Why? Why? What could I say?
A dream told me to? The guilt, like liquid glue,
hardened. But what the dream said was true,
and undeniable once heard, like the tale
Jonah told of flightless birds inside the whale,
bony feathers clacking like the hollow limbs
of crabs. Within our fog of wants and whims,
something's emitting heat as if it were alive.
It hums in there like a fire or a beehive,
and I'm grateful for it, for the lizard's tails
it ejects, writhing, on the hearth's cracked tiles.
Frightening questions, warnings sent -- like that wet
night in March, when I was set to wed.
published in The Windhover
volume 28.2, 2024
