Post-Nightmare Sweat

It’s like waking up in the
deep end of the public pool,
open to everybody —
to grime-caked fingernails, to
broken glass and bloody toes,
to women who wade in the
shallow, slowly tiptoeing
while thinning gray hairs fall out
of sunburnt scalps and into
the unsuspecting water
and stick onto the wet skin
of fish-like children coming
up for air after spending
all day in an alternate
universe infested with
imaginary creatures,
body odor and chlorine,
wet hair rubbed on a towel.