I did not dream

I was a suitcase,
which did not fall
from an open window

and smash onto a nearby roof
into a thousand pieces.
Did you see all

those double letters
hang onto one another
for dear life as they rolled

along the creek
before it spilled ink-stained
sediment into every crook,

then slipped beneath
the street?
You did not dream

of me drinking strong
cups of coffee—
one after another—

before I did not see
it coming. The spell broken
by so many hot murmurings

of drought as rain melts
any remaining mounds
of dirty snow. Not the brown kind

that fell along the North Shore.
Not heaps of dust vacuumed
from New Mexican sand dunes

by monstrous winds.
Not plumes
of molten rock.

I did not drive
the white car
that you did not crash

into a Kentucky library.
And that glass wall:
it did not shatter.

Isn’t this what it means
to be human? The puppeteer
scratching her head

as mechatronic marionettes
rush the stage to dance
on wildly warped boards.

We did not carry
our portmanteaus
into the motel

camouflaged by night smog.
The wood did not burn,
the neon sign did not flicker,

and the clock did not strike at all.