Trouble Sleeping as a Child

1 Every night repeating your name over and over
2 to drive out that red devil with refrain,
3 no mountain moves, even with a child’s faith;
4 and without fail — crooked, blood-red, burnt, and skinned hands
5 peel through, prying open my sealed not-tight-enough eyes 
6 like curtains raised on a stage-frightened Hamlet.
7
8 An apparition pushes me to step out 
9 into the unbridled exhaustion,
10 the naive yearning for grandeur,
11 the inner-truth turned uneasy dream —
12 never understood and always misrepresented.
13 Out from the curtain, the ghost calls
14 to take this fate, and do my family’s bidding.

3.1.17