Interloper

How did you find your way into my dreams,
ripping my comfort apart at the seams?
Once I’d escaped to back rooms of my self,
still I found thoughts of you stacked on a shelf
carefully obscured both in front and above
by other less dangerous memories of love.

You walked nonchalantly into the room
that I had just cleared with a cloth and a broom
of other dangers and sadnesses, not
knowing that once again I had been caught.
Now I hide out behind walls at the back
where all of my worst fears reside in a stack.

Cowering here as you stride through the place
that your very presence has turned dark and base.
How could I have loved such a frightening soul?
The box of my heart turned into a bowl
with all of my secrets and weakness revealed—
things that I now know I should have kept sealed.

There you sit quietly, perched on a chair,
one hand on the desk top, one hand on your hair,
writing cruel words—I know about me.
I ease my way over, hoping to see,
but the paper is empty, your ink has turned clear
making impossible all that I fear.

As now I remember that I let you in,
forgetting all else in the charm of your grin.
The joy of your hand as it guided me sure
across the dance floor—all that allure
that kept me involved in the surface of you
avoiding the dangers that later I’d rue.

So even now, so far from your threat,
I find myself struggling, caught in your net.

This is a rewrite of an earlier poem For dVerse Poets Open Link Night