When I was a child, I suffered from extremely vivid nightmares. I would awake from them utterly convinced of their reality. A couple of cries in the night quickly established my father’s impatience with such behaviour.

The realization that my father wasn’t going to help me was, in its own way, more terrifying than the nightmares. That fear is the inspiration for day 18s NaPoWriMo entry.

Enjoy!

My Childhood Nights

There’s something lurking in the dark
Behind my closet door.
No way I’ll call out to my Dad
Made that mistake before.

I swear the door just moved a bit
The gap is bigger now.
I stare until I see a shape
There in the dark somehow.

I wish that I was brave enough
To go and close that door.
But no reward could make me put
My feet down on the floor.

I curl right down into a ball
Tuck my sheet in all ’round.
And when they wake me in the morn
That’s still how I’ll be found.

My father says “They are not real. ”
” Don’t fill your head with fluff.”
He’s grownup so he cannot see
Or recall well enough.

He has assured it is not real
But wise words cannot fix.
The terror I feel squirming here
For I am only six

Cheers, Winston