JOANNA PEARSON

The Dream Animals Long to Return

After smoke and censer, heavy hides pulled back
to reveal our pallets, after the sleeping pill
of ceremony, you‘ve dreamed yourself into a bat,
while I‘ve become an anteater. In the sinking pit
that‘s slumber, delta waves lap against our totems.
You flap forward, spurt guano, beady-eyed echolocator.
I‘m ground-slung, fur-booted, toothless, slow-motile,
snuffling through dust with my eyes lowered. Later,

when we‘ve lost each other, learned our new bodies,
we hold little in common: a taste for insects,
temperature. You roost. Your thousand-eyed squad sees
my plumed tail in the cave. I snort hoarse syllables, shake
dank air, dream coffee cup, toothpick, earring—objects
to summon you, restore our human shapes.