In the dream, Craig said to me,
you know, Rosemerry, there
are fifty-eight kinds of loss.
He pointed me to an easel
with a large blank page and handed me
a moss green pen. Here, he said.
Fill them in. There were two columns.
Loss of living. Loss of the dead.
In minutes words filled the page
like clover reproducing in a field.
Loss of time. Loss of breath. Loss of love.
Loss of masks. Loss of shoulds. Loss
of musts. When I woke, I could
no longer name them all. But I
felt them growing in me, feel them,
still, flowerless and powerful,
exploiting any cracks in my certainty,
breaking me down from the inside,
making me softer, softer. Softer.