Rooms
Things like that happen all the time.
I once spent hours looking for a cat which slept unlost
in a spare room he wasn’t allowed in.
A single thump on the wrong ceiling
told me he was present - if not correct - and ready for life.
And I could sleep.
The thing is, the unsuspected tears through strategies
like meteors off course.
For instance, I dream myself in colour.
Hair - brown, frame - tense in clothes donated
uncharitably and long ago to the young and retro.
I awake not to the candlelight of sepia
but an intense digital glare. Hair-white,
skin toned by stuff I can’t afford.
You could argue that, in reality,
I sleep lithe and dark in a locked room,
alive somewhere after nine pm and halfway
through something I was watching.
Mirrors are chances to rethink.
Consider all the times you observed yourself
contemplating death, divorce,
or what it means to waive defences against
life which occupies you - curls up till it’s ready for itself.
Next time you stare into your eyes,
dare to rummage through the jumbled stuff.
That suit is there, with its impossible
zips and in-stripes – already bagged
with your coloured hair and the way you sigh
or smile or cry in glass.
My dreams are seldom of what happened.
Often, I am happy at last with a man I couldn’t have,
or stepping out in impossible heels
and a perfect sense of just how good I look.
The rubbish chute of years does not begin
from the rooms where I sleep.
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