Silence

The silence between radiators and constellations
Takes place three-some odd dreams before a vacation.
Meeting gears clumsily detaching a man's hand in the dust-crushing machine guts of an aspirin factory shift.
Adding their glued-open eyes to the good Reverend Pitman's hard-to-find bird head collection.

And the dream trails off
In to long, drawn out conversations set in sickly-lit hospital hallways and over-cleared tables and office space
About worker's comp and what the headache people are willing to give up in order to ensure that today is the day that no one went bald.

There's a brief intermission.

They then offer you money for love and a popular song.
A license to peel, and spare no expense endless supper with big doc moon or gun.

Then the dream ends
In an extended stay America kitchen.
You're beating eggs.
You look down for the whisk and...
See a sealed-off wrist
On repeat.
Completely destroying the snow globe.

And the day begins.
Before and during the silence between space heaters and constellations.
And again
From the bed with the boy in the absence of an absolute aspirin.

There, watching you through your bedroom window,
A winner bee slurs its legs on a half-snipped sprig of barbed wire
While you imagine more page five gals pouring pink in to the center of clouds.

Or you.

Or the other way around.