Dreamers

The fat, bald man studies the wallpaper
while recounting dreams of missing teeth,
falling from great heights, his mother.
The psychiatrist smirks. Freudian theories
for two hundred and fifty dollars an hour.

The fat man gets into his car, feeling
empty. He passes a prison. Dreams of
freedom, violence and guilt. Entering
his duplex apartment, the twitching cat
is dreaming of biting his master’s nose.

The psychiatrist passes through another
hospital corridor. On his left, a mother
sits beside her twelve year old son with
leukaemia. The child sleeps, dreaming of
fishing for rainbow trout. She doesn’t dream

anymore, too many sleepless nights
and unfocussed, irrelevant days.
She notices the doctor gawking, and he
waves at her. She forces a smile back
at him. Later that night he will dream

about the woman, with his back turned
to his wife, a sea of green linen separating
them in their double king size bed. Tomorrow,
he will practise therapy as he does every day,
while he ignores his own dreams.