He is an extra. In the background,
he adds petals to the soup,
or paces and smokes
near a camel-colored chair.
He watches news from 1987.
He doesn’t have lung cancer.
Or I forget he had lung cancer.
He says things like, Zebras, drinking at the river. Is this a palindrome?
but not to me. I don’t remember
that he’s dead, don’t call out
or ask him to look my way.
And when I wake,
the plot of the dream,
whatever it was, becomes
like water, or something
with water flowing through it.
Michelle Hendrixson-Miller works for a non-profit that strives to make the world a better place for all children and families. Her poems have appeared in Adirondack Review, Mudfish, One, Poem, Thrush, and others. website