Don’t hide your dreams in dirty pillows

Once I read a story about the poet Eduardo
Galeano’s wife Helena: how she dreamt of being

in an airport, along with everyone else
carrying the pillows on which they’d lain

their heads the night before— passing through
the screening machines, they’re purged of all

traces of dreams that might have leaked
into them, for fear they might harbor

subversive material. Can you imagine each
slip-covered mound of cotton or memory foam,

buckwheat, feather or down, moving on conveyor
belts under high-wattage light? TSA agents

no longer care if your carry-on bag of toiletries
exceeds 3 liquid oz. They don’t bother to wave

those electromagnetic wands down your arms
and legs or in the area of your crotch.

It’s kind of like a giant laundromat— lines
of unacceptable matter processed for bleaching

before being tossed out the other end:
colorless, odorless, blank as amnesia.

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