She asks me for the value if she traded in these teardrops, then brings me all the bathwater and asks me what it's worth. Waiting never collects. Every story, true and false, intersects in this place, which is our version of their time. The set of all things that exist only in an imagination must exclude nothing. The number of people who have lived. Any number from the set of things dreamed. Everything slides into the day before yesterday. And that's where it's starting to happen.
Mother, you have to remember. You have to know what I remember. The same light shines across possible worlds. Our daughter waited to be born for a long time, and every time we put her in a shirt, she wonders if it will take a whole hour. I have proof that what she imagines is real, and that her world is an illusion. What you have is called forth by example. We decided to make a baby, but she was not the decision. The world emerges, on occasion, from the mind of her idea. Saint Bill put this thought in her head, but we all knew what it was. Anyone can trace the story back, eyebrow through eyebrow, but it's Agrippa who can really feel what a star means (to somebody). The morning star aspirates. The evening star phosphoresces. Her beliefs are the same however they're worded. You'll sleep when she does.
Mother, you have to know what I think. Teenagers may be able to read our thoughts, like they were cleanly printed on tags attached (with warning) to our pant legs, but the same people walk into the past as walk into the future. Can I really be responsible for what I am doing in the past right now, as I am the things I have done? Is the cup, before it was broken, more real now than it was, or more real as I imagine it? I don't mean to make a moot point. I know that there is no difference. The imaginary world is as real as anything. The cries of the child are as real in your arms as they are in this sentence, as far as you are concerned. You'll sleep when she does.
Mother, you have to see this! Real kittens are carried to the story in a bright red wagon, with a bed of orange peel and pencil shavings. There is a body that corresponds to the mind in question—some have found them indistinguishable—and proximity to that body takes kitten and cart alike and multiplies them. Every possibility in its time comes into existence on the other side of this door, only so many of which we become conscious of. It could be that Agrippa is aware of these relations and merely pulls the lucky one from its livelihood. All of the expressions being contingent to a contest of probability. This one is cuter than the others. This is the one she grew up with. Or all of the kittens are in there, pawing at each other, and Agrippa can pull out any one of them, and show Beatrice the winning kitten, who will no doubt say "Yes, that is the kitten I was thinking of!" How much of the outside world isn't imagined? If every bit of it is real, then it enters our mind like wine mixes with water. Your smile is too real to be absorbed at this moment, but the smile printed on the lip of her orange cup could be Saint Bill, and as she leans in to give a kiss or take a drink, you wonder if she differentiates between any of these things. The smile is filled by ideas they touch on, and as she might see you there, she smiles. You'll sleep when she does.
You lend your shape to a path through the freezing fog. The dream plays a trick on its memory. A daughter named Gordian. A daughter named Clue. How do you know what the mud dreams of? You may know more than you think. We have our own outside. The chronology of days is a good way to order them, if only memory worked that way. So where are we now? The ambulance is parked on the wrong side of the street. The woman is sitting upright in the stretcher. Our music accompanies the cliché: "only human beings die of natural causes," which will only be true so much longer. Daughters named after numbers or months. A mystery is traded in for a secret. The secret is my footstool and the mystery is my headache. The man with the murder charge seems out of place. Fear whips up flags wherever he isn't. Meanwhile, my hand has turned to bread. Laura will love it but my daughter will starve!
In the womb it's always summer. No one knows who turned it on. The outside is exclusive to those who want in. However it may I'm still Jon. My wife changed her last name and I changed my first name. The mental subspecies gathered around a person, staying around after they'd gone. I dreamt about belief change. The forms of mind are a forest. It burns every summer.
As a child I often speculated why Christ didn't visit me in dreams. Last night I dreamt I read of a Christ of Metaphor. Chris tells me you can't read in dreams. The breast comes to me. She told me she believed in a god, but only for her mother.
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James Yeary is one of the organizers of the Spare Room reading series, and the publisher of c_L books. With Nate Orton and Chris Ashby, he has been published in numerous issues of the my day series, the most recent being my day walking the Wilson River Highway. He has taught poetry as a collaborative art making practice in the classroom, in the museum, and on the street.
