Plaster [“At another work site In a sister borough”]

At another work site in a sister borough, a neighbor hears me coughing and tells me she has been having nightmares: dreams within dreams. She wakes in her own bed to find a fine white dust covers her entire body. A flat sheet draping derelict furniture throughout the house. It is like heat, she says, choking on the words. And my children and parents too—they live with me—we can’t breathe at night. When I wake up for real I’m coughing. Parts of anecdotes are jettisoned in flurries: a coworker drinking from the same coffee mug, tar from the exposed roof rising with the afternoon sun, renovation debris drifting through the cracks between our two buildings. Now her eyes pin me like my mother’s. Now, she addresses me in a manner after an aunt. Listen, you look after yourself because you can’t expect them to. But also you—your work, this is the problem.