Your girlfriend breaks up with you
in a dream because you can’t keep
the sheets kicking like you used to.
You wake at the pink light of dawn
over a mountain that is not home.
Your girlfriend is home in the city
asleep with your dogs and your sheets
that smell of four years together, no matter
how vigorously you wash them. She wears
her old blue sweatpants and her breath is
as it always is at dawn. You are hours away
taking care of your art and she is, as usual,
caring for everything else. In this antebellum
house it is so quiet your brain jumbles thought
into everything and nothing at once. In the dream,
you thought the two of you finally found
that spark again. But she pulled back
into the dark sticky matter of imagination
that you’ll never again be able to reach.
You sat naked on the bed and it was also
a kitchen. She was into you—one hand on
your inner thigh, finger barely tempting
neglected lips—and distracted. You ruin
the moment by making it therapy so she calls
her Navy friend to come pick her up. Let’s
hang out, she asks and there he is
with a bottle of whiskey. You reach
for her, swear you’ll shut your mouth,
but now you’re at brunch without money
and there are dogs tied up across the street.
They are about to pull away from their leashes.