The Love of a Sleeper

On Finding My Hair in the Drain

I thought it was a spider.
Then I thought my wife
had finally cut her hair
and that meant she was pregnant
because pregnant women do that.
It must be the shock of knowing
something grows inside you, that
it has been growing inside you
and you didn’t know it.

But it was neither a spider
nor a sign I would be a father soon
and have to grow a bushy mustache
and take up pipe smoking.

I didn’t think of death right away either.
Rather, I thought of riding buses
and being anonymous everywhere I went,
and if, by chance, I ran into an old lover
or a student, who had felt the urge once
to reveal her long, painful crush,
she would think the better of it now,
turn up her collar and keep walking,
while I, on the street, check
the address written on the paper
against the numbers missing from the doors.