The cold pushed Lori indoors.
There was enough hot chocolate to last until spring.

There was no one genre that would carry her through.
She required folk as well as rock ’n roll.

Jazz and blues. And several centuries
of classical and early music.

She listened to music when she was not asleep
or napping after a carb-heavy lunch.

Her only exercise was on her rowing machine
that lasted as long as The Beat With Ari Melber.

Jennifer called once a week during the three o’clock hour
and left cryptic messages about her therapy.

Lori kept geopolitics in her dream journal
ranked the world’s problems

and used Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
to predict where gunfire was most likely to take place.

In a nap’s dream after a bag of chips and a jar of salsa
she pin-dropped each conflagration prediction

with eighty-two percent accuracy
and was tendered a contract from the State Department.

copyright © 2023 Kenneth P. Gurney