of course your dog's name is Kafka
and it wears its Alaskan fur
on your walks in front of me, between
the lights turning your hair
into a more mauve shade
of bleach and I catch a glimpse
of you looking back for me with
Kafka's tail between its legs,
the images are identical.
Even now that I
know you and have slept between
your soft sheets, no longer still wondering
what you think of my heavy
melon of a head or the time
you read to Kafka from the Metamorphosis
and said you could relate, or when you said
that you were worried about a dream
where you'd forgotten how to photograph
a desert landscape, and I woke you up and
said you've never been good with desert landscapes
and you asked how far we were from Death Valley.
17
Zach Brennan is a writer living in Washington, D.C. and can be contacted at: shelley.percy.b[replace w/ 'at' symbol]gmail.com