1: I dreamt of water. Swimming. Though not the way
you’d think someone dreams of water. No, I couldn’t breathe in
it, I was not a mermaid. Though I imagine dying is a mermaid.
All hues in all the rivers rupture, emerging death’s womb,
slipping, water-dressed.
2: The heart’s errata comes in waves, an iris, a knife
sliding in the wrist. My roared and red pulse, its bleed renewing each
night. I want to see the spaces where you sleep. The way I might
lurk in the black, tiptoeing around the other dead. Earthworms
on sidewalk after the heavy rain pulled them from the ground.
Their 5 hearts all aching. Though I suppose I will never wake them.
The hearts. The dying. I dreamt of you, of taking your power.
3: I am howling. Casting spells. In the field, birds
look for insects and fruit. They want something sweet, they want sugar.
4: A hundred yards away children
handle a bullfrog. Pulling her from the thorax in which the heart
is situated. They want to make of it a home—the heart—and wonder
what happens when kissing a bullfrog.
I tell them, he will only emit a stench.
5: There is no magic, the dead tell me.
Dreaming of tibias. Not broken. Of the ring finger. Not broken.
Your radius, your heart’s ulna.