Dream Lovers

by Mark Bonica

I bowl on Thursday nights
with my wife’s scorned lover
whom she left me for
a cruel laugh and,
“Life’s too short
to keep having sex with just you.”

He found out life was too short
to have sex with just him, too.

We bowl with all the other
broken hearts,
new ones always arriving, stunned
in her wake.
They have made me
team captain
because I was the first.

I have a blue satin shirt
with, “Captain” embroidered on the back.

I am proud of how it shimmers
when they shine the lights on the disco ball.

Then there is the secret
dream lover I had before
I was married.

It was just a one night fling,
but she returns now and then
to fill me in on her progress.

She doesn’t threaten
to reveal our secret,
it’s become something
of a sacred bond between us.

“You were mine, first,”
she reminds me.

But she is also married now.
To a dwarf.
She met him at her
disabled persons activist group
after she lost the use of her
legs in an agricultural accident
in Manhattan.

We sit in a dream cafe
drinking over-priced coffee
and show each other pictures
of our dream children.

“It’s a life,” she says
before she becomes a crow
and flap-flops away —
no need for legs.