No Nightmare

As soon as she comes into the kitchen I know she’s been dreaming about me again

She washes out the coffee pot in silence stares out the window at next door’s gray cement wall

It pains her so much that whenever I appear in her dreams I am already dead that it takes her most of the day to start to breathe again

Meanwhile, her daughters, hungry scratch and tap at the closed doors bite each other’s legs chew up another tomorrow

It’s so risky to make a wish for someone else but I draw circles in the black coffee with my grandmother’s spoon

blow across the surface until the thought touches the edge of the future:

Afterwards, let me be gone from your dreams recalled only in daylight twice a week, at noon and only in the spring

while the hungry girls wash their hands and giggle and remember better things.