On Dreaming of My Wife

All love is a form of violence,a domestic beat

                in the heart            as much as the head, a strike to the onlything we find vital, our safety. But that sounds so

scared, which might mean I am finallyhouse broken,

after all these years of really trying,spent learning to wipe the toilet seat, to provide—

    I have begun to believe my abuelita,who believed our bodies were not built to be comfortable    but to comfort others, as our minds

were not made for ideas    but to catalogue groceries. I have been told        that love is giving orders. Last night I dreamt

    I was a feudal lord under a red pagoda heating          a kettle of tea with my wife.

Your own heart condemns you, I said with each sip of tea.        I do not condemn you, she said with each sip of tea.

    After waking, I felt proud,    having reached a new level of fidelity        because she was actually in my dream.I looked at her as a Romantic poet looks at trees.    To think in grunts and finger points,            admittedly, is not beyond me.

Neither is groveling. Or regret.        These fighting techniques, I've mastered.

    Because she was naked and still jangling in sleep,            I felt horrible, knew I was,

    like it or not, intentional or not, just one man                in a line of men,

who had stopped her from breathing            by kissing her,        by placing my weight atop her,                in the name of protection.

I indicted myself, as you might indict a young couplearguing in front of a library, neither of them dressed very well

    or looking happy because of the summer heat            and books pinned by their elbows,he pulling her arm, bringing her closer,            twisting her wrist    when her voice ventures a little too loud, a little too far                    beyond the yard.