(3 new poems thanks to irene) thirty three years go by and not once do you come home to find a man sitting in your bedroom that is a man you don't know who came a long way to deliver one very specific message lock your back door, you idiot, however invincible you may imagine yourself to be you are wrong thirty three years go by and you loosen the momentum of teenage nightmares your breasts hang like a woman's and you don't jump at shadows anymore instead you may simple pause to admire those that move with the grace of trees dancing past streetlights and you walk through your house without turning on lamps sure of the angle from door to table from table to staircase sure of the number of steps seven to the landing two to turn right then seven more surely you will float serenely on the moving walkway of memory across your bedroom and collapse with a sigh onto your bed shoes falling -thunk, thunk- onto the floor and there will be no strange man suddenly all that time sitting there sitting there on what must be the prized chair in your collection of uncomfortable chairs with a wild look in his eyes and hands that you cannot see holding what you do not know so sure are you of the endless drumming of your isolation that you are painfully slow to adjust if only because yours is not that genre of story still and again, life cannot muster the stuff of movies no bullets shattering glass instead fear sits patently fear almost smiles when you see him though you have kept him waiting for thirty three years and know he has let himself in and brought you fistfuls of teenage nightmares though you think you see in your naïveté that he is empty handed and this brings you great relief at the time new as you are really to the idea that even after you have long since gotten used to the parameters they can all change while you're out one night having a drink with a friend some big hand may be turning a big dial switching channels on your dreams until you find yourself lost in them and watching your daily life with the sound off then of course having cautiously turned down the flame under your eyes there are more shadows around everything your vision a dim flashlight that you have to shake all the way to the outhouse your solitude elevating itself, like the spirit of the dead presiding over your supposed repose not really sleep at all just a sleeping position in a series of suspicious sounds a clanking pipe, a creaking branch, the footfalls of a cat all of this and maybe the swish of the soft leather of your intruders coat as you walk him step by step back to the door having talked him down off the ledge of a very bad idea soft leather, big feet, almond eyes, the kind of details the police officer would ask for later with his clipboard and his pistol in your hallway when they said he could walk on water what it sounds like to me is he could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee literal people are scary man literal people scare me out there trying to rid the world of it's poetry while getting it wrong fundamentally now in the church of 'look it says right here, see?' a girl with the sun of her youth at her back and the shadow of her womanhood before her on the stones is approaching with a delicate *click clock clack* her sandals full of toes that I suppose are headed home it's early in the evening and up and down the river people begin to gather pearls of laughter on a strand and I thought my solitude would save me it was pious it was grand but the monk that walked beside me just let go of my hand
Ani DiFranco Lyrics brought to you by danah boyd since 1995