Daisy Bassen
A reminder
In my mind, I gave you a dog.You, who I have never met,
are real and not-real, a self
I have created from a story I was
told. The dog is not-real and not-
real, a self I have created from
a story I told myself and the teller
of the story I was told. You are
not-real and real, your memory
ruined, a knot that cannot be undone,
your first self no longer real, the self
you have become only real in seconds,
a definition that is not real as we
consider a real self. I am real
because I remember your story, how
it was told and what I thought when
I heard it, when I gave you a dog
to sit beside you, untroubled by being
forgotten, flickering in and out of
reality for you but not for me. The dog
is a Golden, panting lightly, dark-eyed,
wearing a vest, hard at work. It’s real
work for an unreal dog and an unreal
man, the memory of it mine, able
to be recounted, returned to, held
against my self like the man’s hand
held against the Golden’s breathing back.
I said you had died but then I brought
you back, gave you a dog, remembered.