There are skunks in there
every night burrowing
into the yawning parts
of my wife’s dream-filled mind.
Night by night, their numbers increase—
as black as her stare,
as pure as her smile.
Backs that bear the white-tipped
senses of God.
They float through as an endless
dark stream
that glistens with my motives,
and confirms my drunken pleasures—
beaming out the secrets of my every move,
my grief,
my thorns.

The truth
is a cage.
My mind
is my dungeon.

She says the skunks are the alcohol.
I say they’re the dogs.
She says maybe they’re everything.
And she was gone before I could move.