I moved to Freud's town for you,

although ‘for you’ was too much to say

at the time. I said we moved

together. I moved, for once,

for something other than myself.

Other than myself! Can that be right?

The story they tell of this city

is you never see the inside.

You're kept out so adeptly you see only

stage sets, not even the true outsides of the walls. You only

hear it spoken of enough to want it. Once I heard cues

for the side show, never the main event.

Since you left me I walk around here a lot.

I'm not dead, either. To be not dead,

I claim, is the most marvellous thing in the world.

Or to be touched, to have a finger pushed inside you.

Some people are approaching in Chinese dragon masks,

and twisting their way through a rehearsal. People hold their

scripts and do not know their hands shake.

We borrowed stage sets we can shift, paint, switch,

but now we will never see the main event.

What we see will always disappoint us.

Reality does what it likes. I am not dead, we say.

Nothing is being done to me.

No one's skin on mine.

In my brain's city, I built a lot of skyscrapers.

I am a hoarder. I press all things around me

so I can't tell the things from myself.

In that brain's city, we are still a unit. We clip

our tickets, open doors with silver keys,

pour coffee into glasses, and read about other city's atrocities.

We stroll through the supermarket like Orpheus, singing in our tiny Hell.

How well done it was, what we did.

How good we were at all of it.

Inside the city the courts declare the election

must be held again, red curtains reopened,

script wholly rewritten,

and now the people applaud.

They are proud to be part of something strong

enough to push people away.

The sun hinges in a willow between stage lights

and no one can move it.

The dragon is made up of twenty people all of whom

have a different idea of what a dragon wants.