The scrub and sandpiper pronounced this as a dream as we rustled the 
scant gravel on bicycles and I listened as you were

        regurgitating the story like a martini, the resolute midnight flounders a 
mile away squandering large parts of the ocean by not being there

        but here, you understand. And even I, your correspondent inept, can’t 
reconcile the dream imagery with a reality that I face,

        now that waking up has provided the lackluster epiphany, the point of 
that dream. I can’t recall what your story was about

        or whom it figured but, appraising it such, in light of an evening whose 
light disturbingly resembled gin, newly credentialed as I was in

        the environment, I’d say you were glowering at the emptiness in my icy 
center, or what you called my center, when you found I had

        bought fruit from Chile when Pinochet was still dictator. But I don’t go
often, at all, to the beach, and I only consciously buy Chilean

        at wine stores, so please bother someone else. My shame mutilated with 
its grievances, I suffer the recurring, a post-nap dry mouth.