Thanks For Coming to This Side of Town
A POEM BY ALISON LYNCH
Washable Silk Wrap Sleep Skirt
I hate when people tell me their dreams.
I hate when someone’s like,
It was me and my fourth-grade teacher and Dr. Evil and we were stuck on a
broken escalator at
my old ballet school and it was really scary.
I am uncharitable to this person,
resentful of the performance they ask for because
their story has all the trappings of mattering (they were scared)
but in reality does not matter (didn’t happen)
and frankly undercuts itself (Dr. Evil cameo).
Describing one’s dream is an unforgivable waste of everyone’s time,
I said once and you laughed,
which reminds me,
I had a dream about you.
For years I was certain I’d run into you
Ideally at the farmers market
My tote a performative burst of swiss chard
You’d ask all the questions but I’d just want the one
“Oh, nobody serious,” I’d say
With enough of a pause to make you wonder
(I rehearsed for hours in the mirror My star turn that never was)
But I couldn’t picture your expression
I’m leaving for a while
This thing I applied to in Portland
I’m excited I think thank you
ex-lovers ugh
but what’s a better word for
don’t answer that
you were always too honest
do you want to hear the dream?
I’m walking up to your place, late
trying to sneak up on you like you like
like you used to like
not a creak from the wood steps beneath me
(that’s how i know it’s a dream—
your real stairs always groaned under what my mother calls my “heavy tread”)
but I’m airy as tissue paper
draped in a moon-blanket of absolute silence
not even the gods can hear me
I slither open the screen
turn the knob tick by tick
and float like a petal onto your living room rug
lights off it’s inky dark
my hands are gauzy shadows
you’re in here somewhere
a magnet
I step cautiously
edging into the black
every follicle an antenna
probing
seeking
and then
just beyond my breath-baited fingertips
I feel you smoldering
my kindling skin prickles
I’m utterly combustible
ready to be consumed
destroyed
reborn
any moment you’ll appear
easy as a sigh
now
now
NO—
Mrs. Wheeler’s 7am leaf blower robbed me of your face
I laid there for a moment
settling
stiff-necked in the vulgar morning light
wondering if you ever ended up cutting your hair
you did