and then five to three was the last thing I remembered

Because I had peered over the hedge a few times
and I had seen the hammer and the scythe
next to the oxblood smock in her stepfather’s shed, and I had seen
the three lucky numbers
in the bottom of a glass of peated whiskey.

Morning, it shot out like uncaged dogs
a bitter reminder
and I dreamed of her in a room with thick carpet,
books lining the walls, Kandinsky and Rothko prints rolled tightly,
stacked like kindling in the corner.
I saw her, too, in dreams where she was younger,
where the blackberry vines worked around the trellis
and the loam was a deep auburnsombré ring.

I saw her in fading pictures near the capsized boat roadside, out of context,
when she crossed into Kentucky; she radiated in the dusk
and sometimes even in dreams you can die from longing.

We were barefooted and the earth was so riddled and alive
right underneath us, a decadence from the day before
where we watched the rain from the porch
and a garden snake slithered out from behind the oak
barrel and I would not let her face get too
far away from mine because I was jealous of the thunder

and her skin made the earth’s loucheness seem
trite and redundant, because even in dreams she
managed to overcome the cleansing rain
without words
the language of water and cloud
and the trials of eyes.

I dreamed of smeared paintings, and the interstate
southbound, and a bright broken
skyline flush with vulgar birds and grocery bags thrashing
across the dirt road to the abandoned tracks near the end of the hedge.

We didn’t even speak in one dream
because we were mute, foreign
and arrested in lust, deafened and sore.

I dreamed about
a broken wineglass and beads of sweat on her furrowed brow
and I dreamed I read Ray Carver stories
to her over
a rotary phone by the kitchen window dusted with pea green pollen.