Water Soluble Dreams
It’s moon hour when the governor of California asks the bathroom mirror what to do, what to do about the drought, and the governor of the bathroom mirror stands inside the oval frame, waiting to answer for himself. When they reach in unison for the faucet, it’s toothbrush time, it’s floss minutes, one’s right is the other’s left, water flowing twice into double drains. I asked the residents to cut water use by 20 percent, says the governor of California, mimes with reversed mouth his backwards twin, but they refused to listen. Then the faucet sputters. Then the sputtering turns to coughing, turns to wheezing, to desert sand rushing into the sink, the longest shushing, so the governor of the bathroom mirror flees, runs until he runs inside my home, into my tea green bathroom, and motions toward the showerhead, its perpetual dripping. I read his lips: You’re one to talk. I am one to talk, am talking now, expressing concern and ambivalence. I must have two sides, two mouths, two minds, two lives: one that worries about the future while the other sleepwalks through the fire.