Mummy

  Maura Dooley        

In his dream, anxiety sends him
to ask just how I plan to solve
the problems at the British Museum.
He finds me ironing but cannot remember what.
I can guess. We’d be in the Egyptian Room,
the bandages spilling out across the floor,
their creases tighter and each coil
steadily more soiled. There is a mist
of steam and hot silver,
light that unspools its greenish net
and there, my arm’s compulsive, certain strike,
back forth back forth back.
In my homespun way
I am unravelling something foreign to me.
Smoothing out the layers
down to the heart of it, a core of
jewels, curses, secrets, love, death, theft.