monsters

I remember when we were all young.
I remember when the monsters lived under beds,
behind closet doors in the dark.

I remember being able to look
and know
with certainty
that monsters are what you cannot see:
what lives beyond vision.

I was half-right.

Real monsters creep
in the dark of your judgment,
the spaces between what you see
and what you fear.

In the dark, we cower and tremble,
seeking protection from monsters in the arms
of just what it is we fear.
We cling to lovers,
monsters in the skin of men.

I remember when I was nineteen.
I remember when I grasped your big hands,
shaking in my own dark.

I remember looking at you
and knowing
with certainty
that you would never hurt me:
that you would keep me safe.

I was wrong.

I am hollow slaughter pinata.
I hang on a meathook.
I swing and wait to be torn to shreds
by claws of a monster lying in my bed.
I sway, dripping out crystalline abstractions of hope,
emptied now of the potential to hold so much
in my crepe paper insides,
to hold anything like you held me
down.

I remember when I was twenty.
I remember when I was dragged across the basement floor,
sweating cold fear.

I remember not being able to look at you
and knowing
with certainty
that monsters are of man and not myth:
that what I thought lived under the bed
lived in mine;
that what they wanted was my heart from my chest.

I was right.

Monsters clean up the murder scene
and hide
with the evidence
in the dark of my closet.
Neatly, my papier mache corpse was hung
to drain
out
childhood
by monsters in manskin.

Cellulose is no match for rapist's claws
and I am no match for the boxes of onion skin memories
that tumbled down into my head
when I flipped the switch.