The Dream of Walking

Without preamble
as to why I haven’t been doing it
I begin to wonder if I can walk again.
The details come back to me in retrospect:
an accident, perhaps a wheelchair,
perhaps an eternal afternoon on a couch.

But I can stand,
I reason to myself, and
the memory is equally clear
standing up to shave, or speak.
The mundane reality of the afterworld,
of life after the thing that happened.

When I was in the hospital I dreamed simply
of walking, waking to find myself on fire
with pain, tied down with tubes.

I wake needing to urinate.
I stumble to the bathroom
before realizing the mundane reality.