Overheard Overhead

They’re a species capable
Of believing their dreaming
Is all about them. Watching

Them is fascinatingly
Alien, and to themselves.
They peruse their own dream states

More avidly than the world
Of other states around them.
When they enter into them,

They don’t assume a window
Or a portal has opened,
Much as they love fantasy.

On waking they say, I dreamed
About my father, my ex,
Flying, stripped naked last night.

They people their dreams, even
Dreaming them, and then assign
Names they’ve known to our shadows.

Few of them ever notice
We aren’t the people they’ve known—
They aren’t flying as humans

Dreaming of celebrities,
Sex, and peculiar disputes.
We’re whole other lives from them,

Lives loaned to them—us flying,
Us naked, us the shadows,
Us the peculiar disputes,

Not them, and not about them.
It does help that they don’t know
How their dreams let us know them.