Dance Rehearsal: Middle Age
routine
The women walking home from work
are told they’ll have to wash the dreams
from their duvets before they make supper.
What dreams, they ask, but the choreographer
waves her hand. The dreams aren’t important, she says.
Show me the fields you dream in. And their duvets
are lowered like clouds onto the path they’ve been using
as a hymnal. This is surreal, one of them says.
Another is climbing the intimacy of duvet like a mountain.
They hem their misgivings and start dabbing
at the dirt, one of them schedules her scarf
and uses that. They’ve dropped their childhoods,
their phones, their partners. A puddle is discovered
on the north side of the park and they cram around it,
vying to get at the water before it’s used up.
The audience does nothing to help. We watch
the women bend and expose a fatigue that is cotton
and private. Their dreams are relentless.
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