Challenging Poetry

nightmare

I didn’t know him.
that’s brought me awake,
sweating,
eyes wide,
heart hammering terror.

he wasn’t there, of course.
I turned on the light
just to prove it,
and the shadows were safe again—
a bookshelf,
the laundry basket piled high,
my tree of earrings
which absolutely weren’t hands.

wide awake.
downstairs, I checked the windows
and the doors.
twice. I stood up. I sat down.
I turned on every light in the house
at three o’clock in the morning.
I opened a book.
I closed it again.
I couldn’t close my eyes.

he was there,
his fingers tracing my skin,
his breath hot,
my hand reaching out
deep in the middle of the dream
to take him—
even though I didn’t know him.
I was so tired—
so alone.

When I saw the prompt, I tried to write about anything else, but this is the nightmare that sticks out to me as the worst. Which is silly, I know. The whole dream was a stranger coming up to me in the gym, and asking me to marry him--which was odd, because I didn't know him at all. I woke up in a panic, not because of the marriage thing, but because even though I knew next to nothing about him, I was tempted to say yes in the dream. And I knew that was wrong--

I had a friend once email me (after a silence of about ten years) and tell me he had a crush on me when we were in high school, and would I marry him. I thought back to the boy I knew in high school and how much I'd changed in the intervening years. I thought about my sister's first marriage (the one whose divorced--I have four sisters and two of them are happy with their husbands) and how she had married him after knowing him for only a brief time chatting on the internet (where folks can retain best behavior longer)--they met offline the day before their wedding. And I swore then I was going to get to know a person before I made that kind of commitment.

So, the thought of settling shook me. It took me nearly an hour to get back to sleep. So, that's the dream behind the poem. I know, it's a silly fear.