To the Darkness

When I was little, you seemed so big. I hated the thought that you lived in my closet - if the door wasn't closed, you'd get out.

I never saw you, but I knew things about you: You had teeth, and claws, impossibly long, pulled into a smile as you watched and waited for my vigilance to slip. You were fast, but could move without sound, snaking along the floor at the base of the bunkbed's ladder. You had big, big eyes, and could see everything.

I knew your weaknesses. You hated to be disturbed, and you hated to be seen - a sweep of the light, and you'd recoil into smallness. You respected the borders - no climbing over the railing, no climbing up the ladder, you didn't try opening the closet door if it was shut.

You knew mine. The light only reaches so far, and you moved faster than I - you might not have been able to open the door or climb the ladder, but you'd send me wondering and worrying until the only relief was the sweep of the headlamp, just to make sure. You would watch, laugh silently when I snatched my hand back to safety after trying to be brave. You would chase me up the basement stairs, would follow me on vacations, only kept back by the sounds of my family sleeping blissfully around me.

We were both stubborn. I shoved blankets in the cracks of the lower bunk to keep the light out at night when my sibling's reading kept me up past sleeping time, hating the light as much as you did, close beneath me even if I didn't think you were in the shared bedroom. I was afraid of you, but I knew you wouldn't cross the borders - I got rid of the night light when I got my own room in the new house. You never bit my hands or feet when I got too hot in the summer night and trailed them over the side.

My new bed is heavy - no space below it, pressed as it is into the carpet. The drawers beneath it are full of childhood things and spare blankets - you can't live there comfortably. But my closet door is still shut at night. Sometimes, the old fears come in, but I laugh and roll over, showing my back to the darkness. I face the wall, stare at the dark paint and nothingness until I drift into dreams.

But I still close the closet door where you might still live before I go to sleep.