Two things often happened in my dreams as a child:

I’d hear someone creeping, creeping up the stairs, a stranger,

An uninvited guest, stepping quietly in the dark,

Always a threat never realized

And

The toilet would come alive with a deafening growl,

It would lift itself from its tile floor surroundings and

Start to shuffle, shuffle toward my room.

Sometimes, the two intruders would creep and shuffle

At the same time, a grand nightmare outside my bedroom door,

Moving closer but never meeting, never quite making it.

What did they want, what did they mean?

What would have happened if the creep on the stairs

Met the plumbing monstrosity in the hall?

Maybe I should have introduced them. Maybe

They were just loneliness incarnate, maybe

They needed a firm handshake and a “Hello”.

Maybe

I was not as powerless as they would have me believe,

Maybe I could have distracted away my own nightmares,

So that, in my adult dreams, I’d finally be able to scream