It Flew Up Out of the Dark

I’m afraid of it the way

Harry Potter is afraid

of Voldemort- no,

the way the others can’t even

say his name.

.

I am not conscious for months

at a time, alert system sleeping

like the lazy, blinking red light

in the front window of my car when it’s parked,

going nowhere

.

and then-

I’ll be reading in bed or

out at dinner with friends or

staring into space with unfinished work

on my hands and

.

and it happens like thinking,

oh,

this dread, this pinprick of

unpleasantness, this rolling-over

my stomach enacts like a lame dog.

.

I don’t move, because if I wait it out

it might leave, might

drift out the window like an almost-

case of carbon monoxide poisoning:

nothing to see here (until it’s too

late).

.

They’ll ask, disbelieving, how it

got me.

was I taking all my pills and potions?

did I exercise three times a week?

did I drink enough water, get enough

sleep? (yes, yes, yes, yes)

.

They’ll want to blame me because

I was the only one there at the time.

But it is not that the receptors

in my brain slept on the job.

they may have merely drifted from

their posts for one, two

seconds too long

.

and even if they hadn’t,

even if all the molecules in my

breathing body tried

their damn best-

maybe it was just biding its time

wherever it went off to,

sleeping like a thick black smog

on a jungle floor-

until it saw the slightest crack from

on high, and pounced.

here it is,

and there I was.

it’s not under the bed or in

the closet:

.

it flew up out of the dark,

and still their questioning makes me

feel like a failure,

like if I only listened hard enough,

for a second maybe, I could have heard

the leathery beat of its

wings.