I talk in my sleep about a life
I no longer believe in, filing
down dairy goats’ horns, black Labs
racing to the watery center of a slow-
moving body, morning walks with Dad,
shotgun in hand, watching fingers thump,
thumping a Copenhagen can, wad
stuffed behind an inherited lower lip.
When he died, I asked for his heart,
purple, Washington profiled.
We never kept prisoners, my love,
not always a beeline, a bullet’s course.
He reminds me that in middle school
I gave him a drawing of a Care Bear,
Tenderheart, but I know this is not true.
If truths matter, I sketch birds,
crows transformed into “vv”s,
an A-frame house, windows
squared and X’d, a smiling sun
with its staggered rays,
knowing in the oak’s hollow
hides a girl, a tall glass of reverie.
