I wake to someone standing at the edge

            of the bed. It isn’t you.

                                                You are breathing

like a tide beside me. No—

            you have been gone these ten years

and I wake to no breath.

                                                When finally the sun

                        soaks the room in gold, only

my own breath—     distant as a wave

            from a hundred fathoms down.

                                                How am I this small?

How have I stayed                               with you this long

                                                a tiny blue velella

                                    gripping your ship’s stern

                                                            through foreign water.

Last night                    in the gunroom of my mind

                                                the hall was full

            of my twenty geese

heaped as dead leaves

                                    all their necks broken.

And you          my husband               had broken them.

                                    See what feathered ruin

                                                swells around us? I loved

to feed the birds          when I grew

            tired of waiting for you.         How many times

                        a winged thing has saved me

                                    from a knife. Here is the puzzle:

            in the dream

            you killed my pets because you loved me

                                                and because they were only symbols—

Every time

                                    you turned your head

you meant something else.

                                                The gesture, lost on me.

In your disguise, as you watched

                                                how long I would wait for you

I knew it was you the whole time.                                And yet

                                                there is a gate through which

                                                my strange dreams come.