the men I became

by Michael Passafiume

As a child
it was not unusual to look
at the bedroom doorway
from my bottom bunk & stare
into the vacant eyes
of Frankenstein,
tight-lipped sneer of Dracula,
to turn away & back,
away & back
until they were no longer there
& decide it was safe to allow myself
to slip out of consciousness.

As a child
the recurring nightmare
was of a Sasquatch-like giant
chasing me through a hilly expanse,
trees few & far between,
the giant close on my heels, ripping
large tufts of grassy dirt out
of the earth & throwing them at me
like grenades whose purpose was not
to tear apart but to
entomb.

As a child
it was not uncommon to find me
sleepwalking through the upstairs
hallway then downstairs to the frigid
living room where one or both
of my parents would be watching TV—
a nine-year-old zombie standing
in a different expanse,
melodramatic music swelling in-between
over-enthusiastic commercial chatter,
the zombie finally settling into
a dark mustard-colored armchair,
head pointed toward the TV,
coaxed, eventually, into sleepwalking
back to bed or perhaps ferried
there on his father's back,
cherry-scented pipe smoke steeped
into a royal blue velour robe
lulling him back to sleep.

As a child
the pediatrician's diagnostic manual
held no entries for
Doorway Monsters,
Recurring Nightmares or
Semi-Conscious Sleepwalking,
no instructions on how the child
was to be held.
So instead the pediatrician offered
a vaguely reassuring smile, said,
He'll grow out of it soon enough but for now
try some baby aspirin.


I no longer sleepwalk,
the odd nightmare spitting me
back into a crooked world
where monsters have cloaked themselves
in anxiety & depression,
where predictable routines
hold me in place,
where the man I've become wonders
what happened to the men
I became.