Joseph Holt teaches at the University of Minnesota and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Your Nightmare Joseph Holt        The other night you had a nightmare. You kicked across the bed and woke me. In my own dream there was something of an earthquake or a collapse, some kind of disturbance—things were shaking. I realized it was you, turning over on the mattress, struggling against something holding you down against your will, but nothing was there.        I know what it’s like in dreams: though we try and move, our bodies are always tethered. I’ve had dreams I was back in high school at a track meet, running the 100-meter dash. I take my place in the center lane, the black rubber composite warm under my fingertips. The starting gun goes off. I rise from the blocks but my feet seem anchored to them. I pump my arms and pitch my shoulders, yet move nowhere. The humidity closes in on me; sweat beads over my forehead. I look up for help and become disheartened: the scoreboard flashes the seconds in normal time—faster even, it’s been a full minute already. The woman in the lane beside me shrugs; she whispers, Aren’t you even trying?        You never told me about your nightmare, and I never asked. A few years ago, on a Sunday in late August, we were sitting beside each other on the patio, iced teas in hand, surrounded by dusk. Earlier that afternoon I had hand-tilled the garden while you read by yourself in the study. I told you of my plans for next season, of azaleas and clematis and larkspur, all bordered with a lattice of honeysuckle; I described to you a fireworks display in flowers. You nodded, your mind elsewhere. I finished and a silence descended upon us like the night. Before we went inside, you said, unprovoked, that sometimes we don’t need to talk, we know each other so well. We know each other too well: those were your words. And that hurt me, as if you had somehow realized there are parts of me you don’t want and wish you could unlearn. In defiance I withheld myself and became cold to you; and you became cold to me. Soon the little things fell away. That spring you hurt your knee and we quit playing tennis. I stopped sending surprise letters to you at work. You no longer kissed me anywhere but above the neck. I gave up shaving my legs during the week.        Someday we’ll look up: the scoreboard lights will have burned away; the twilight will have closed in around us. But I am trying—I’m looking up now.        Your nightmare, what was it?