Genevieve Betts

Dream

I only dream
in the desert.

Each night, I cross
borders in my mind,
arrive in Arizona-

the evening heat,
an invisible sweater
I cannot remove.

It pushes against me
riding down University Drive,
my old turquoise bicycle
underneath me again.

Muscle memory takes me
to the university
where I lock my bike
and fall asleep working.

My mother says,

I thought I saw you last night
in the bike lane

pedaling your beach cruiser
in beaded flip-flops.

I don’t tell her
that it was me-

a vision,
apparition,

a brief visit
across state lines.

• • •
Until I was 28, I spent my entire life living in Arizona. Nothing about that seemed strange until I moved to Philadelphia and realized just how unique Arizona is after all. Although an entirely new landscape surrounds me now, Arizona provides the sole setting for all of my dreams. “Dream” deals with that odd connection my mind keeps making between my new home and my hometown, how real the heat feels against my shoulders. “Yen” reacts in a similar way, comparing both places. Now that I find myself moving once again, this time to Brooklyn, I cannot recall having dreamt once of Philadelphia.

Genevieve Betts’ work has appeared in (or is forthcoming from) Conversations Across Borders, Rougarou, The Bakery, Cricket Online Review, Clockhouse Review, Poetry Quarterly, NANO Fiction, as well as other journals and anthologies. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and currently teaches creative writing for Arcadia University’s low-residency MFA program in Philadelphia.