THE HUSBAND HAS A DREAM
The streetlights in the cul-de-sac
blinked on one by one, illuminating
the husband’s grief as it rose and fell
in radiant clouds of dust, settling on the morning
glories clamped tight against the night,
on his suit jacket,
on the backs of his hands.
If he tried to brush it away
it smeared him with greasy soot,
so he didn’t try.
All around him were houses
whose windows poured golden light
onto the lawns
and inside each room
small dramas enacted.
In one, parents floated
around the dinner table, desperate
to keep a child laughing.
In another, a man fucked a bored woman
on the stairs and with every step
she slipped further away.
Or a teenaged boy read a book and drank his first beer.
Or a dog slept alone by the fire.
It seemed to the husband
that someone must be waiting
for him to come home, but
there were no keys in his pockets.
By then there was so much dust
in the air that it almost seemed solid before him,
forming a frame,
then a door, then a lock.
The hardest part was grasping the handle—
which was suffering—
and then he was through.
Rebecca Hazelton is the author of Gloss, forthcoming in 2019, Vow, and Fair Copy. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry.