I've grown so uncertain about the packages,
I dream at night about all the possible things
that could go wrong with their arrival. I dream
that I've moved away and left no forwarding
address. Or that the packages arrive, but
contain the wrong purse, the wrong pair of
glasses, or a shade of lipstick I don't recognize.
I dream that though the items are mine, I'm
nevertheless dissatisfied. That my neighbors,
who wash their cars and sweep their lawns,
steal the packages in a way I come to silently
suspect. Or that thieves, true bearded
adolescents or soccer fans, steal the packages,
and when I confront my neighbors they clasp
hands in the doorway and sigh. It's possible the
packages were never sent, so that after weeks
of waiting I place a call and begin the wait all
over again. It might be that the mailman slipped
and fell and died. That a truck fire claimed my
packages and the lives of 20,000 sea monkeys
trapped inside. Or, and this could be, that I never
ordered the packages to begin with, or that I
did, but with credit cards that were somehow
fake, on a computer that was in fact a toy, in
a tiny room furnished with props and framed
by cardboard walls, that my neighbors are paid
to watch me as I pretend to fix dinner, fold
laundry, and stoke paper flames in the ersatz
fireplace. That though the packages will never
arrive, here is another impossible thing I will
spend my life at times believing.