Dread grinds its cigarette out on my morning alarm, 

and in my head I am thinking of another lifetime where I didn’t worry, 

but was that ever so? They say I always daydreamed, 

never quite touching the ground, my feet lifting 

like gravity couldn't find me, but now my feet know—

worn from work, exhaustion making a nest in my shoulders, 

hunching them up to my ears like I'm wearing 

my spine all wrong, and I forget how 

the clouds bloom above my eyes, 

glued instead to houses flickering with each lurch 

the bus gives, that diesel exhaust in my chest— 

hollow yet weighty, the way life feels sometimes. 

Tonight, they say, the moon is a sliver 

and somewhere a comet is rushing 

through the dark, radioactive green, 

green like the plant on my bookshelf, 

a pothos, from the Greek, meaning longing— 

those ancients who saw gods everywhere, 

who couldn't look at stars without seeing 

someone's tragedy pinned in place, glittering. 

This green wanderer passes through Orion or Andromeda 

or whatever myth hangs over me now, 

and some part of me hopes I'll look up. 

But I can't tell which light is Cassiopeia, which is just a plane 

blinking its way to Cleveland, 

and I'm too tired to remember who loved who, 

who got turned into what for wanting too much. 

Home now, I slip off my heels and call my name. 

The child I'm looking for doesn't answer— 

My body sighs, the room holds its breath, 

the bed takes me in the way 

the ground takes fallen things. 

And I hope to dream—of what? 

Of everything. Of nothing at all.