I remember

Who's there?
Who's there?

And I remember
Flashes of laughter
And lunatics
Seductive propaganda
Scrolling across my mind
Like guerrilla cinema.

Belts and wooden spoons
Flies in the afterbirth
And crawling on linoleum kitchens
And cracked porcelain sinks stuffed with
Dirty dishes.

The early morning anxiety of grade-school
dark stockings to hide curses.
Secret friends and festive holidays
And everyone in their Sunday best
Pretending to like each other.

For generations and generations of
Sad mistakes.
Stealing away in the dead of night to
Escape the stiff jawed henchmen in the hungry trucks
Of an angry landlord miles and miles away. Impatient and understanding
Waking on the side of the road
Hissing radiator hoses cracked like
Burned skin.
Days so hot the nuclear holocaust would've felt like
Siberian blizzard.

And I remember
The first time I felt it alive inside me
Turning the dead weight
Moving within the folds of its winged embrace
Opening and sliding those black feathers
Inches at a time.
Those feet
Pushing and digging into the membrane
To find its comfort or to relieve pressure from one
of those stagnant staces
Where one of its limbs had gone numb.
And I remember night
Listening to it hum
Feeling it move in its mysteries
Cleaning its feathers for hours
And I remember this
And I know
I never had a chance.
There's never any escaping it.