ten.

Tonight we've left the windows
open to the breeze. I leave them be,
even though it makes me nervous,
even though I fall asleep
and wake to the edges
of nightmares. Dreams of the year I lived
across from a dealer, my room
lit by an old picture window
and facing the street, the whistle
of a bullet too loud with it open. Of
climbing the wall into my childhood bedroom,
struggling not to wake my sister,
locked out of the house and caught, suspended.
Of my hair in my eyes and my feet kicking at brick,
breath stuck somewhere between
home and away. Of the monsters that
children fear, and adults ignore.
Here, the trees sound like the lake in a storm,
and I can't sleep for the missing
smells—no pine needle damp, no
granite sharp like a summer afternoon,
no hints of old varnish and the
orange crates my grandfather's father used
to build the windowframes.