Shared Experience

He tells me that after
the coma, he dreamed
they moved his bed into
the center of the football
field. People crowded
around him, and he
told them all the same
joke, over and over,
again, and nobody
responded.

But in the coma, there weren’t
really dreams, just people
gathering and retreating,
smells and voices wriggling in
like light through leaves.
Darkness, warm and womb-like,
the opposite of nothing.

Eliza Jerrett lives in Somerville, MA. Her work has been featured in Rumblefish Quarterly, Ohio Edit, First Night Boston and the Boston Poetry Marathon.