You’ve married the wrong girl.
Never leave Minneapolis, me,
the not so innocent bystander.

A rundown mansion with high ceilings
and multiple turrets
on Pillsbury Avenue

your wife inherited
by mysterious means
brings you no joy.

You beckon me to join you
on the window seat,
really a chaise longue

for daydreaming,
a secret kept and discarded
decades ago.

Believe me, I get it—
how it feels to live
the wrong life.

If I had stayed put
in the city where I belonged,
we would have never met.

I wouldn’t know
who was making a cameo
in my dream last night.

How often do you curse
the moment
I first spoke to you?

I wake up to see you
are safe in your adopted home
thousands of miles from mine,

me, still a foster child
afraid of blades scraping
another frozen lake.