My son wakes to creaks and thumps like boots on his bedroom floor. They are here for him, they’ve found his room, the demon with the hedge clippers who stands against the wall, or the man with the muddy shovel waiting to tangle him in sheets and bury him, still breathing, out in the yard. Night moves around his room, grinning. What he fears is pain he cannot handle – us, dead in the other room – and hands, not those attached to wrists, but the kind that fingercreep along the floor. He kicks the covers back, brushes past the thumbs, the clippers, the raised shovel, he’s down the hall to our bedroom, where we are still alive. When he says, crawling between us, I needed to know you were OK, I kiss his head, and the dark sits like a stone on my tongue. What can I say to him tonight? These things are real, but not here. My own dreamer sits sniggering on my shoulders, elbows digging into my skull.
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