Infestation Above a Pink Room

I remember when I brought the demons home with me;

they clung to the space beneath my shadow until 

I locked myself in my box of a room 

and they lingered in the narrow space 

above my ceiling, in the attic I saw once

but was scared of falling through.

I heard them running in the summer nights as 

I trembled beneath the thick white canopy,

on which I placed my collection of

stuffed bears like amulets.

But their stuffy faces and rocky eyes betrayed me.

I remember the night the ferret got loose upstairs and

wandered into my room but I knew

it was Teddy, the oldest of the pack,

with the broken ear and crusty sides,

directing the haunt.

And the people in the graying posters mocked me

as I lay still on the floral quilted tomb that

jutted from the bare wall,

listening to the demons scratching in the walls,

desperate to get out to get at me to

end my childhood.

And in the morning the leafy fingers of the

trees would rouse themselves awake

outside my two closed windows.

A car, maybe two, would pass in a 

strange kind of silence on the empty road.