Clinging to the Dream, I Pretended Not to Notice the Baby’s Cry

I wanted to be asked
for nothing. Not by a good man or hands
sticky with the last throes of infancy. I wanted to be space

inviolate for a single hour.

I dreamed night was an ethereal highway
but really it was a singing from contused lungs.

And morning was the morning after.

Nothing I said had any heft to it.
It didn’t even go in one ear to come out the other.
In darkened corners, violet light molted

as if from a bruise

forgetting itself. As if from a sunset. I asked
to be opened, split down the center

by a knife delicate as underthings.

A fruit ready for the jealous mouth.
There were moments, entire eras,
when the only answer seemed abandonment.

That, or a copious forgetting.

No—not a song: a chant. And the words were the words
of a dream. And the dream said

Listen. And the dream said Take

and eat. At least
that’s what it felt like,
hummed against my electric skin.

I couldn’t actually hear anything.

Ashley Kunsa is a poet and fiction writer from Pittsburgh. Her works has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, The Penn Review, The Writer magazine, Cream City Review, and many other publications. She lives in Billings, MT, with her husband and two children and is assistant professor of creative writing at Rocky Mountain College.