Self Portrait as Fear of the Dark
If you wish to,
meet me in the basement.
I have made friends
with the monsters here.
Have made monsters
with friends and still
without friends made more —
collected the dark
and tied it together
with thread and the threat
of leaving. With shattered
Christmas ornaments, game
cartridges that stopped
working. Assemblages of
fragments of body.
I loved them.
This does not mean I was
not afraid. Have I
ever loved anything
I was not afraid of?
I have
cried at a bus stop,
watching the snow. I have thought
about snow and
a young man’s reaching hand.
Thought about a hand
and thought about a red mark.
In every hero’s journey
the antagonist is what
the hero could become.
If I ever call myself
wholly good — this is how
you’ll know
for sure I am
a monster, though
not all monsters lie,
even if it is not infrequent
that they take public transit.
I am traveling back
through my memory
and placing wet floor
signs as needed. I am
making a map of triggers.
I am tripping in a basement, waiting —
me and all
my capable monsters,
my fear held together by a button.