The Room

My father was gone,

My brother and sister married and in homes of their own.

I, still living at home, still sleeping in my childhood bed.

Except for those night when I couldn't sleep,

Or move, or even breathe.

"Asthma," said one doctor;

"Not likely," said another, "Sleep paralysis," Hmmm.

So on those nights when everything stopped,

And the horror began,

I would struggle against the chains of sleep,

Until I could break free, into my mother's room

Where she slept alone, well, not quite alone,

Her terrier slept at the foot of her bed,

Underneath the pile of covers,

In the unheated upper floor of the house.

She still slept on "her" side of the bed,

And I would climb into the other.

Wordless, I would sleep there til morning came.

I remember the bed, with the dog, and a peppery smell.

Later on...

I would wake, or think I woke,

To the sound of my own cries:

Some monster, or dark figure of the night

Had inhabited my sleep.

My mind, awake, or misleadingly so, before my body,

With a single goal--to find that room.

Until fully awakening to the knowledge of loss:

There is no room, no refuge, no place to hide,

From the inevitability of grief.