I no longer fear creatures in the night;

They have shown that any protection

Will be defeated in the end.

It just takes time.

These things that stalk me do not come

From outside my bedroom window as I feared

They would in my earliest years,

Nor from the likely culprit of my dimmed hallway.

The cracks belying monsters crunching bones I found in

All my childhood nightmares are all too real now.

Inexplicably.

I had been vigilant

Throughout childhood- I did not expect

To be ambushed quite so easily.

But then again, I did not expect my nightmares to reside

Within my own body.

Hips, wrists, ankles, shoulders, spine.

Joints tensed long ago to spring from my

Bed at a footstep's notice lock me into place as surely

As any beast's jaws.

I no longer fear animals creeping in, come

To drag me to my cold bedroom floor and devour me.

My bones snap and pop like a carcass divided up within the pack

and no amount of pleading or fighting will coerce the

animals of age to leave such vulnerable prey.

The end comes faster if I don't struggle.

I no longer fear predators at my bedside.

I know the night's chase is honing in-

All I can do is drag myself through my last few

Valiant miles. But sometimes, on my better days,

I like to think I gave the pack a run to remember.