Let me loose

Don’t lay on top of me when I am asleep
don’t hold me down
I’ll lie awake waiting, to
be set free from shackles

You did not put them on me
it was someone else–decades before
but when your heavy leg won’t let me roll over
I get afraid.

‘Don’t fence me in’, someone said, and
This is not original, but it is all about me
I know, I am talking about myself
we will get to you soon, I promise.

Don’t slam me against the wall
I can’t take it anymore, but if you can dig it
I will trip you and hold you down with my foot
walking over you, trampling

Maybe then you can understand, how
passion turns to terror when 1976 rolls through
and my head in its cyclone of memories
won’t know how to love you like you deserve

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her ripped dress
has the weight of the world
about its shoulders
the hem
gives everything away

the coffee is bitter today

I may as well have said
‘go ahead and cut me’
I never said
‘stop it’
I never said
‘don’t do it’
I couldn’t run
like in a dream
when feet
are stuck to the floor.

In the hall

I wait
my breathing shallow
for the footsteps
on the squeaky stair
my lungs feeling empty
rasping
lost my voice to the loud
‘hello’?
mouth dry
like old air
of that last time
in there
memory fail me now
let’s not remember
brain cells, teach
me how to forget
in the hall
outside the door
at the top of the stairs

in my forest

when I dream
I see what might have been
if Hansel and Gretel’s father
had a change of heart
if he went into that forest
to find them
courageous
before they tasted the candy walls

but this life was destined
to be one of dungeons, pitfalls, and swamps
and utterly
uphill only