for Linda Lee
A woman’s domain is the realm of the invisible. That’s what she said to me, we were drinking coffee, about 7:30 in the morning, the kids were groggy and bloated with sleep, whining for their cereal. She said, men go and build walls, they love to see them standing against the sky, solid, with a roof on. But women, she said, we know that the roof will leak, someday the walls fall down, so we put our faith in the vacuum cleaner bags that we empty, in the dirty dishwater swirling down the drain. We wake slowly from our interrupted sleep, savoring the confused dream state which is actually less confusing than the waking state. Let’s talk about dreams, she said. I told her mine, like I do almost every morning, sunlight slanting into the kitchen, illuminating every mote of dust floating through the air.
