I replace the pan of water on the radiator in my sleep. I know this because I wake standing by the fogged window upon which I’ve transparently written: REFILL RADIATOR PAN. CHECK.
There are parts of my body I have never seen. I have told you about this before. I have dreamed of seeing them & in my dreams they appear as increments of wind—dodos—newborn universes—rotary phones.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life. The night I walked in my sleep to the all-night diner & could have died of exposure or been hit by a car had you not woken me. The night I tried to find my childhood home.
One night I dreamed that a girl was born with the umbilical cord of her twin sister around her neck. Imagine the sonogram. A girl, her conjoined sister trailing behind. I name the first Manifest Destiny & the second Acceptable Loss. I pronounce them inseparable & in this respect I am an expert. According to medical records, I was born in my sleep.
Eric Weinstein’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Believer, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and others. He lives in New York City.
