7
Domesticity
i.
In this one, you are slicing a watermelon,
asking me if I want to try it with sea salt. I
don’t remember asking you to love me.
ii.
This time, you are pouring me a glass of
water. Glass breaks but we slow-dance to
Depeche Mode while the radio hisses.
iii.
In the last one, you have me around the
waist, your hands a shorthand for all that we
could be. The timer on the washer dings.
I have the same dream often enough
It is really never the same. In each, I feel somewhat disembodied from myself. This is to say that my body has peeled itself from itself and shifted slightly to the left. In each dream, my grandmother is there or not there. Last night’s was a nice featurette where my grandmother’s smile is slightly off and we travel through the fields of Ireland to find the little Italian candies that used the line the insides of her purse. We come to a house where a distant relative offers us the candy. She has loads of the stuff, cocaine brick-sized, the colors smelling like too much ripening fruit. I press my hand to a raspberry brick and pull away taffy-style, causing my mother to shriek and recede into the couch. From that day on, she hoards my grandmother’s belongings and we do not speak of the incident. I wake up tasting fruit. I have the same dream often enough.