Over coffee
he told me I was in a dream he dreamt
one night beside his white
lace-clad wife. I was calling to him,
but my words were
foreign,
like Muslim women pressing veiled noses
against fashion windows:
I won't ask you to pick out fine china.
You don't have to help wash the sheets.
I want only to touch your sweet darkness.
He asked me for one of the pink packets
from the white ceramic square
beside the sugar cellar. I was
quick
to give it to him. What was I
supposed to say?
You don't want to make the dream real ?
I don't mind. It's OK ?
You don't have to explain ?
When next we met, he was divorced,
and I had a comfortable lover. We
shared coffee with sugar
that
neither of us tasted, and nobody
spoke of their dreams.