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 naivete   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