(Excerpt from No Man’s Brooklyn.)

   I see her rising off the bathroom tiles, toes pointing downward.

   I know this is a dream but I also know this actually happened, once, a long time ago.

   Except then Anya was dry and fully clothed and she was in a hallway not a bathroom. And she was alive.

   Now Anya is dead and I am watching her rise.

   She is slick and bright with moisture (indicating that she has just gotten out of the clawfoot tub which she hovers in front of) and wrapped in a beige towel which covers her from the freckled tops of her breasts to just below her thighs.

   Her hair is a water-darkened mass plastered against her back.

   Palms turned out, hands quivering with rigidity. As are the muscles in her flush-pink face.

   Her nose is bleeding, just as it was that time in the hallway. A thin scarlet thread snaking its way from her left nostril to the edge of her chin.

   I marvel at the phenomena of inches separating Anya’s feet from the floor.

   I marvel at Anya, and the nearness of her unreachability.