I keep dreaming of you in that strawberry patch
we had – my backyard, 2007.

The barn was already haunted so I planted my nightmares
in bushels of berries for others to ingest –
you know the old fairytale about watermelon seeds,
well, it also works with spores of sadness.

I wish you could have seen it,
but you must have some time or another. You picked
me from a lineup of a hundred black-haired
offenders, most with blue eyes the color of a package
of ramen noodles or Pepsi cola cans.

Suggestions that I vend my fruit, their ovaries,
were fortified between phone calls from state-over friends
I just did not have the ovaries to do so, no strength:
it would feel like the hair being pulled from my scalp

before I even knew you.
Present day, it is easy to understand why –
I keep dreaming of you in that old strawberry patch
choosing to taste and love my sorrow
over someone else’s happiness, as if it were beautiful.