Everyone in Your Dreams Is You

Which means I am the murderer
with his big bent gloves and I

am the poor wretch who looks
like my mother and also the paper boy

who I think used to be the murderer
and I am riding by the house

I used to live in but it's not the same
house. I must be the girl on the couch

who looks nothing like me, because I see
out of her eyes, but surely I would never

sit there frozen like that when he crept in
looking like he was hatched from an ice cave.

I'm holding on as tight as I can, but how
can I ever make it across this rickety bridge

carrying a sick dog? Am I the one
carrying the dog? My god,

am I the dog? And what about
the onlookers on the other side?

Is that me, plural and all at once?
What about the little dancing monkey

skittering ahead making the bridge
sway—why does he keep winking at me

and, please, someone tell me—
where did he ever find

such tiny shoes?

 

Poems by Kathleen Lynch: