Night Terrors

I woke up to the sound of a pipe being banged
and then the sound of a cough. No one
was home beside me. I did not think of ghosts
or intruders. These were outside me,
coming out from inside me. I’d dreaded this day
for years. I’d always suspected
that I would eventually
become secluded among them,
lost in a grove in my head.
What appeared at first to be fertile imagination
was in fact the crazy coming on for its first show.
“Do you have a name?” I asked. No answer.
They would speak in their time which was not mine.
I wasn’t important. I could be if I agreed to listen
and it was hard not to, even as some part of me
stepped aside from the sweats and the beating chest
to remind me that there were likely some pills for this.
“Stay awhile. I’m lonely. It would be nice to have someone
to talk to, even if it’s only me, even if all you can do
is bang on pipes that aren’t out there, but in here.” Still
no answer. I can’t even talk to myself right, I thought,
or heard. I bet there’s a pill for this. I bet again
that I could talk them back inside. I don’t know yet
if I have won. There’s nothing out there now, or in here,
except the furnace and the light in the living room,
the clack of my nails on the keys, my chest still heaving.
I’m no longer worried about waking anything up, disturbing anything.
A good night’s sleep among the gray firs I can see in the kitchen
(formed I am sure by bars of moonlight or perhaps the neighbor’s porchlight)
will be enough to make it all go away. There’s a pill for it,
at any rate, or so I’m told. Someone keeps telling me that, anyway.