She was asking to go, in my dream,
Her whine a misery of meaning.
I should have known by the
Misplaced couch
That I was somewhere inside my head.
At the open door, sudden sunlight,
Snow replaced by waving green.
A zombie, approached across the porch.
My little dog barked and I yelled,
“Get out of here, we’ll kill you!”
Dream-me knew the idiocy of my threat.
If I were to unwind this vision,
As if each step backwards was a VHS puppet,
I would recognize the zombie.
A man struggling with cancer,
Hairless, pale, and wounded.
That wound striking my fear for my sister,
Also battling and terminal and breaking
My heart.
And, more directly, that my little dog had already
made her accident.
My love, hearing me yelling at zombies,
gently shook me awake.
And, when I shrieked at the cold diarrhea
Sludging up my heel on the way to the bathroom,
He fixed that too.
Put Out to Pasture 