On Noticing a Pattern in My Dreams

I'm not sure why it falls on me to kill
the Cabbage Patch zombie army with Super Soakers

filled with Kentwood water. Or why I'm trapped
in a blurry room, stacking — never eating —
towers of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Why Cher

has a zipper on her bodysuit that runs from wrist
to hip. How that zipper contains such waves of pit hair

& gems. The reason she plucks those gems so carefully,
arranges them on my skin. Why I must shine every flower
on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

My nights are built on anxiety, I suppose — the knowledge
that I must Do Something, even if I don't understand it.

I'll never know how I knew that my Christmas scooter
would be teal, why I sucker-punched my fiancé over tea.
But I'll understand when a friend says, "I dreamed

I could turn into either a zombie or a werewolf. So,
I fought my enemies as a zombie since zombies can't die,

then turned into a werewolf to heal quickly."
He chocks it up to video-game logic. I say
we have the same dreams with different special effects.