A Poem a Day: 3

3.

Dear Dr. Freud

What does it mean when you dream

of eating your cat’s turd?  I know that

sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but

is shit always shit, or could it have a

deeper implication for the dreamer’s

state of mind on waking?  And if when

she wakes she still remembers the dark

taste of those droppings, like toxic tar

sticking to the back of her throat, and

if she can’t spit it out because it clings

to her tongue like her father’s ashes,

and if she can still feel the freezing water

from the basement sink as it pours

through her burning fingers into the

rust-stained drain, is she completely

lost? And if, when she at last gets up,

late, the radio mumbling a mindless song

about a man breaking into the apartment

where he and his ex-lover used to live,

if then the yellow light from the lamp

next to her head feels heavy where it

touches her body, and yellow as piss,

smelling of her night sweat, does it mean
she has to go on living with this

evil taste in her mouth?