In the Dream I Am Visiting

the big trappings of Philadelphia,

walking to a house party with my ex,

who is now dream-dating a man

named Michael Voleo I know

absolutely nothing else about.

I could flyer the city:

It’s 1 AM, do you know where your ex-girlfriend is?

Imagine this Michael, this Voleo: he is no more

than a name in a conversation, an athlete

of promises, a scholar of the constructed life.

A past like impressionism. A future with her

like my past. Maybe they meet at a bookstore,

among friends, and he takes her home

to spend the star’s hours

talking and nudging shoulders on a bench.

Maybe they walk the whole of Center City

finding roses and chocolates he hides with doormen

and parking attendants.

I wonder if I could be him,

would I become him? Wishbone frame

and blood-warm heart, impulse control

and steady hand, an easy rebound

in a game of pick-up. Maybe he puts her whole world

in perspective like a bottle or a crystal globe

where the light dims into evening and the places

they are going are blanketed in snow.

In her dream that I am visiting,

there is nothing stopping me from taking

to the sky, defying the gravity

of mental calculations, reaching

troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere,

thermosphere, the thin cool shock of oxygen

dissipating, light pinwheeling

the clouds—beneath me, all beneath me now.

From this high up, the stars are too far

apart. And the snow tracks, the whole world

is snow tracks.