Flame’s Dream

It is 1990 in a deployed town.

I wear the dress to the interview, its

broad white bib like a side-table linen.

When I exit the building, Animul

runs to me as if I am engulfed in flame.

And so I must be.

In the dream: I’m on the farm,

my mother at the bottom of the stairs,

youthful and not yet char.

She is wet, as though having fallen

into a pond or well and I awaken.

Animul comes home

with tail on fire, is insatiable for knowing.