It was like dreaming that you are given the keys to a model city and instantly feeling the burden of ownership, the keys weighing down your coat pocket so severely you start dreaming of giving them back.
*
It was like dreaming that you are given the keys to a model city and then you get into your royal blue car and drive out to the outskirts of town to leave the keys on an unoccupied bench overlooking a lake.
*
It was like dreaming that you drive back home unburdened, enter your house with its key and sit down with a sigh on your bed, in the quiet and dark, until you notice that the keys to the model city are back in your pocket.
*
It was like waking suddenly from the dream, seeing your house key on its hook, and luxuriating in the freedom from keys to model cities — in the deep ease of the haphazard and the habitual, the half-assed.
Donna Stonecipher is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Cosmopolitan (2008, winner of the National Poetry Series). A fourth, Model City, is forthcoming from Shearsman in 2015. She lives in Berlin.