the haunting

it would happen to me most

often as a child when

sleeping over my grandparents'

house in the red room,

as my sleeping and waking

minds met, I knew

myself to be elsewhere--

in my own room, my own bed.

night had erased my memory

of where I was, until I

awakened to a dizzying wisp

of reality reconciliation.

*

at 32 it happens still,

but more often in daydreams--

waking moments of being

possessed by memory.

acorn scratches her post

and I am in my old apartment,

laying on the worn sofa I'd

fallen asleep on 3 years ago

until I look up and my head spins.

it was only the ghost of it--

somehow, I manage

to haunt myself.