Lately, exes have been sneaking into my dreams,

and other places of suspended thought. Like

when I’m swimming laps, my body blue

and liquid as the water holding me.

They wave. They smile. They flicker

along the blue-floor depths of the deep end.
One shows up to ask if I think he’ll look good

with dread locks. Another shows up with his dog

to ask if I still love her. And another
reminds me of the summer he made a movie

in which I played a young girl learning French,

my only lines words I already knew. And because

he was poor, or young, or in a hurry

there was only one take. And because

I was nervous, or lonely, or young

I remembered only two phrases,

which I purred,

again and again,

in my lowest,

breathiest voice,
 
the way I’d seen Jean Seburg whisper

to Jean-Paul Belmando in Breathless. 
And even in the final scene, in which
 
I was supposed to have been hit by a car and killed,

I wouldn’t die,

but looked straight into the camera

propelled by my too-sudden death —

and kept humming:

à bientôt, pamplemousse, à bientôt. 

    Kim Kent is our poet in Residence for October.