Her ex-husband asks if there was a “defining” moment in each period of their lives.

They both say “No” at the same moment and laugh.

In a dream, a boy shoots a rifle. Out into the sky comes the most gorgeous intricate

pattern of water spray, symmetrical and elongated. It floats in the air like snowflakes.

I dig my bravado, she confided.

They say that’s precisely what brings on death, says her friend.

In a dream, I find all the sandals I’ve ever worn, even the ocean-blue leather high-heel

Famolare platforms. And many boots, some not seen in 30 years.

Fear is dishonesty, his best friend said on a light dose of lsd.

A six-year-old girl explains it all: Kids are zig-zags because whenever mom and dad

go for a walk and get scared the kids say You’re not gonna get lost! ’Cause this is

a one-way path.

Her friend writes from Sing Sing, Have I achieved criminality?

Humanoid and not as blind as war. Thoughts on the old machinery at the Met: clicks

and snaps and whirrs, propellers, gears that calibrate, & arms & wheels and steam.

At least we can grasp it.

He could not move out of his grandmother’s house, so he enlisted in the Vietnam War.

If you can’t see, you can’t think, says a man going blind.

Da comes to me in a dream saying Look, we’ve got the wood from the old floor & it’s

still good—I could use it for something.

Terese Coe’s prose, poems, and translations appear in Agenda, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, The Classical Outlook, Hopkins Review, Metamorphoses, The Moth, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Stone Canoe,The Threepenny Review, the TLS, and many others. Her collection Shot Silk was short-listed for the 2017 Poets Prize. For more details about her work, please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terese_Coe.