Curls

The orb is already risen. Panic strikes. My alarm, the silent guardian of my dreams, Failed to scream the warning knell, Lateness is to greatness—the fashionable time, But today someone is waiting. Blood in all the wrong places, sheets A prison of cloth, I scramble. Icy tile stumbles and cereal Forgotten in a shower of burns One push-up; two; and out the door into the oven. I ask and she answers, or she and I reverse. “I was having a good dream: one with the curls,” And the sky filled with birds of every sort But my eyes were on the road—the straight road Into morning and warning and twisted coffee hair.