it’s lonely up here in the treehouse,
but it wasn’t when I was seven.
when I was seven I could escape with
the figments of my imagination,
but at twenty-seven I rely on printed
words on paper, figments of someone
else’s thoughts.
the monsters under my bed when I was six,
or standing in the corner shadows when I was eight
now reside in the corners of my mind.
they taunt me as I close my eyes
like they did when I was young,
but as I do, they double in size and stature,
consuming me.
when I cry out, no one comes running to wake
me from my nightmares.
instead, my nightmares develop in
the daylight, in my real life.
the thoughts I had when I was twelve,
then thirteen,
then fourteen,
and fifteen,
then again at sixteen,
seventeen,
eighteen,
nineteen,
all resulted in the same thing: the uncontrollable
urge to cut the delicate skin of my wrists
and thighs,
which changed to the urge to drink away the pain from twenty to twenty-two,
which reverted back to the habits of my teen years,
and then somehow, randomly on a Sunday,
became the urge to turn to God.
to open the Bible and read and read and read and pray until my eyes burned from exhaustion.
I still believe God is keeping watch,
that His guidance is a hand placed lightly
on the small of my back.
yet for some reason, the tree house
is rotting,
the monsters are real people that smile at me in public,
and the urges are sometimes so unbearable,
the only option is to drown
them in five to six showers in one night.
but somehow I survive.
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