Dream:  My Angry Son

I’ve dreamt you in parts for months: the belly ballooned and bare as bread (the plum crinkled cord still connecting us), the toes swan-neck thin and fanned in hunger, the little hands new and never gripping my own.

Last night I met you in a vacant room naked walls, floors green and red and yell- ow jumpsuit, a crawling traffic light, you looked at me as if I were a best friend just slept with your wife; while three words bigger than your body smacked the pale crescent of my arms: you left me you left me you.

Lauren Fanelli is a student at American University.