The Things You Used to Do

If you step back for a minute -- step back

While also taking a minute -- you can have this

Brief breathtaking view into an

Alternate universe. Dreams are like that.

Each night I dream something oddly

Shaped, intrusive and wild and it grabs

Me up and throws me into an art house movie

I wish I’d written. Last night starred

Me and Benedict Cumberbatch.

There we are in the lobby of a

White bare movie theatre and a

Young girl’s soda isn’t quite

Right she says so he takes the red cup

From her all the while talking and

Talking to me about the events of his

Day, his lovely hair short cropped.

He goes to refill the root beer, but alas

The mix isn’t right and so he

Determines he needs to change out

The big box of syrup on the machine

Which requires going into an

Employee-only closet and

Now the machine and its tubes

Are disassembled and I ask him

(Because I think I am interviewing him


though we seem good friends):

Benny when was it you noticed that

your life was sort of, you know, ruined

by fame? That you couldn’t do the

Things you used to do? And there he

Is snipping the end of the tube and

Handing me the empty box and

Getting brown syrup on his hands and

Chatting and cocking his head in that

Sexy-Cumberbatch-thinking-way he

Has and “Well I suppose it was during

Sherlock” he says “because it did very

Well in the U.S.” and he hands the

Girl her cup and we rush down the

Escalator inside Union Station to

Just make it onto the train -- in a

Metro Station underground in Paris

And when he gets off he says come on

And there were are at a little

House tucked up a back cobbled alley

With white snowball flowers

Dotting the lane and the water blue

Morning sky and he’s washing

His hands at the hose and chuckles

At me-- Well? Come on!

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Inspired by Mary Oliver's poem "The Uses of Sorrow" from Thirst.