there is rain and there is lightning and there are trees
and in one corner of the field there are two women
with wrinkled faces and long white skirts, making
their presences known the way you wish your grandmothers,
both dead, would. they are picking flowers just for you
(for your hair); hydrangeas and lupines.

in this dream you do not have a name – in this dream nobody has a name –
just a mouth, to swallow the rain, and the clouds that hang overhead
like dead kingfishers are heavy and black and swole with more water.
your clothes are not wet in this dream; your skin is – your skin is pink and wet,
looking the way it did the day of your birth, but your clothes –
old blue dress curled carefully around your knees – are dry
as your lips. you notice your stomach churning. you are standing
in this field and you notice your stomach churning as though
you love a boy. you do love a boy, but not like this: your boy is quiet
as your childhood house, and so your love for him
is quiet as well (it never churns). you dream about the boy,
but he is the wrong boy: a boy suddenly in the corner
of the field, a boy with a face too loud, like the flickering
of a dying light bulb in a darkening closet. this boy has replaced
the women with wrinkled faces and long white skirts;
they have disappeared the way grandmothers so often do.

now you are ready to wake up.
in bed next to you is a boy
and he is sleeping
with a body soft as the entrails of a mother.