The cracked window is a soundboard for the wind. You dream, as light pollution leaksaround blackout curtains, of a police siren over flat river water. To let us overhearour nightmares. My stomach twists the oil in my gut. When the sun comes upthe birds begin. Men walk beside their fences marking sunlight’s progresswith wind-stripped shingles, talking as they go. A fence defines the land as parcel of landwithin an allotment. Far end of the yard the dog snaps at small insects in the tree.A piece of bailing wire far up the trunk where branches begin. When forced to considerthe language-made world, I remember your hand on my hand on your stomach.The streetsweeper covers your breath as a car passes and slows to a stop at the end of the block.The driver talks back to the radio; a woman loads her suitcase into the trunk. Behind the partition she thinks of touching the glass.Your body curled around mine; a single contrail frayed into the sky above the glacial lake.Other voices carried over clear, black water as white streaks burned and shatteredabove us. We undressed under that thinning. Highway near still, and the snow meltin the river, the floodlit bay. There is part of us chained to the concretefloor beside the sea. Laughing gulls scatter afterthe track of gunfire plays. The fence unfolds the seain pinholes where the wire frays the blue tarp.When your dream shakes you, I touch your face and believeI hear your breathing even out.