Knocking

I hear a knock at my door

In the middle of the night

Who could it be at this hour?

My room fills with moonlight

A color one can’t quite describe

And I am filled with ease for the first time

In many years

The knocking continues but I refuse to answer

Ghosts from my past long for closure

But they always show up when it’s too late

I don’t need it anymore, I found it on my own

But still they’ll come knocking half past eight

I tried to ease my mind with words that rhyme

With riddles from past lives

But they took up all my time

The knocking becomes a song I sing in my sleep

And I have something I can finally keep

A piece of me I haven’t yet given away

I have begun to build a castle of fallen dreams

A statue made of what I didn’t know would become strength

I paint from memory and it’s never the same

Because I constantly rewrite the story with a different ending

I was never one to stop reading

The knocking is sometimes banging

Disrupting my sleep, although I never sleep much

Too much time to think and believe

In something much bigger than me

Realistically is a word I use facetiously

Because it’s not really something I take to heart

Because realism isn’t art

Is it?

The knocking stops once they realize

I don’t answer the door so late

Not anymore, because I have to be up early

I have somewhere important to be

I have memories to create that are happy

I used to dig graves for lost souls without a home

I used to get into them and pretend I was that alone

But I don’t think I know how to be

When the knocking slows down and stops

And the sun comes back up

And I wake up smiling