Cottage

There was a full moon.

I was a child.

The room where I slept seemed made of windows,

With only the narrowest strips to support them

Like my bones

Tethering me to the world.



There were no curtains,

No shutters.

Just the moon as bright as madness

Over the tops of the trees.



When I was a child,

I had a recurring dream.

It was a malaria of the imagination.

There was a dark car,

A rainy city street at night,

A man and a woman, dressed to go out.

There was only the narrowest curb

Tethering me to the night.

They said,

"Get in our car.

Come with us."

I always did,

Sick and heavy with knowing

That I would never see my home again.



There was a full moon.

I was a child.

I had a gift.

I could feel drownings, death, spirits.

My father and brothers stayed,

But my mother had to take me home on the bus.

Her scorn could not be stowed with our bags--

It was too large.

"Afraid of the moon!" she would still exclaim, years later.

Yes.

I was.



I remember that cottage,

The moon,

The green and silver bus we went home on,

And the slow-acting acid of my failure.

I remember coming awake in that strange bed and being asked, in the weird silver light,

"Why did you scream?"

I didn't know.

That is the one thing, then and now,

Which has remained utterly

And mercifully

Blank.

_______

all of this is true.

_______